f 


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LIBRARY  ' 

University  of 
California  \ 
Irvine 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
•LOG  AI'JGLLES 

IRVINE 


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^ 


THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM 


IN 


MODERN  THOUGHT 


BY 

WILLIAM  HALLOCK  JOHNSON,  A.M. 


SUBMITTED   IN  PARTIAL   FULFILMENT   OF  THE  REQUIREMENTS 

FOR   THE    DEGREE    OF   DOCTOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

IN  THE 

Faculty  of  Philosophy^ 
of 
Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
1903 


Copyright,  1903, 

BY 

WILLIAM  HALLOCK  JOHNSON. 


•J 

.•■J 

Q 


Biscartlcd 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


Since  its  acceptance  as  a  doctor's  thesis  in  June,  1903, 
this  essay  has  been  carefully  revised  with  some  additions, 
and  references  have  been  freely  made  to  literature  which 
has  appeared  during  the  past  twelve  months.  For  helps  re- 
ceived in  its  preparation  and  in  other  ways,  the  thanks  of 
the  writer  are  due  to  Professors  J.  McK.  Cattell  and  C.  A. 
Strong,  and  to  Drs.  A.  L.  Jones  and  W.  H.  Sheldon. 
July,  1903. 

135]  5 

VI 


—TiS^cr^^ 


CONTENTS 


Introduction      . 


•  • 


PAGE 

9 


Free-Will  and  the  Psychophysical  Question 

II 

Free- Will  and  Evolution  .        •        •        . 

Ill 

The  Consciousness  of  Freedom 

IV 

Freedom  as  Ethical  Postulate  . 


• 


12 


38 


52 


67 


Free- Will  and  Theology        .        .        • 
[137 


THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM   IN 
MODERN  THOUGHT 


INTRODUCTION 

It  is  now  some  twenty  years  since  Professor  James  opened 
his  famous  address  on  the  "  Dilemma  of  Determinism  "  with 
the  remark  that  he  knew  of  no  subject  which  was  less  worn 
out  than  the  free-will  controversy.  Subsequent  events  have 
justified  his  opinion,  and  various  circumstances,  among 
which  the  influence  of  Professor  James'  polemic  is  not  unim- 
portant, have  conspired  to  bring  forward  again  this  world- 
old  problem,  and  make  it  at  the  beginning  of  our  century 
one  of  the  prime  subjects  of  philosophic  discussion.  Au- 
thoritative announcements  that  the  free-will  doctrine  has 
been  "shattered"  by  modern  science  or  that  the  problem 
has  been  "  dropped  "  by  modern  philosophy  have  not  been 
wanting,  but  in  the  light  of  recent  discussion  these  seem,  to 
say  the  least,  premature.  The  writings  of  Martineau,  Brad- 
ley, Ward  and  Royce,  not  to  mention  Howison,  Mallock  and 
the  authors  of  "  Personal  Idealism,"  give  evidence  of  a  deep 
and  widespread  philosophical  interest,  and  this  interest  may, 
perhaps,  excuse  the  present  attempt  to  show  how  the  prob- 
lem presents  itself  to  the  modern  scientific  and  ethical  con- 
sciousness. 

If  we  go  back  to  Greek  philosophy,  we  find  that  the  free- 
will question  emerged   as  a  problem   in  ethics.     Plato  and 
Aristotle   give  us   no   detailed  nor  comphensive  treatment, 
and  perhaps  no  unambiguous  answer.     Certain  passages  in 
139]  9 


10  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [140 

both  writers,  however,  undoubtedly  favor  the  libertarian 
position,  and  here,  as  has  been  remarked  of  Plato,  "  a 
psychological  decision  "  is  reached  "  on  essentially  ethical 
grounds."  '  In  the  later  moral  systems,  Stoic  and  Epicurean, 
the  discussion  of  the  problem  became  more  prominent,  and 
its  metaphysical  bearings  were  clearly  brought  out.  The 
Stoic,  though  emphasizing  the  dignity  of  human  nature  and 
the  power  of  man  to  rise  superior  to  the  accidents  of  fortune, 
decided  against  free-will  in  the  interests  of  a  monistic  doc- 
trine of  fate  or  providence ;  the  Epicurean,  on  the  other 
hand,  holding  that  free-will  was  necessary  to  the  attainment 
of  the  highest  happiness,  sought  a  metaphysical  ground  for 
it  in  an  assumed  "  declination  "  in  the  primeval  atoms. 

The  problem  became  more  acute  in  the  form  in  which  it 
was  raised  by  Christian  theology,  which  deepened  at  the 
same  time  the  sense  of  guilt  and  responsibility,  and  of  de- 
pendence upon  divine  grace  for  all  spiritual  good.  The 
relation  of  free-will  to  the  divine  attributes  of  omniscience 
and  omnipotence,  to  the  origin  of  moral  evil  and  to  the  ad- 
ministration of  divine  grace,  furnished  the  subjects  of  the 
great  theological  debate  carried  on  successively  between  Au- 
gustinian  and  Pelagian,  between  Thomist  and  Scotist,  and 
between  Calvinist  and  Arminian, 

The  roots  of  modern  discussion  are  to  be  found  in  the  psy- 
chological and  psychophysical  theories  of  Descartes,  Spinoza 
and  Leibnitz.  Its  course  has  been  influenced  also  by  Hume's 
treatment  of  causation,  and  most  of  all  by  Kant's  doctrine  of 
man  as  a  citizen  of  two  worlds,  in  one  of  which  he  is  phe- 
nomenally determined,  and  in  the  other  noumenally  free. 
While  the  free-uill  question  is  primarily  a  psychological  one, 
having  to  do  with  the  analysis  of  volition  and  its  relation  to 
the  other  elements  of  consciousness,  it  has  come  to  have  im- 
portant connections   with   physical  science,  as   well  as  with 

*  Windelband:  History  of  Philosophy^  p.  191. 


I4l]  INTRODUCTION 


II 


ethics,  metaphysics  and  theology.  It  may  be  said  that  the 
psychophysical  aspect  of  the  question  is  just  now  most  promi- 
nent, and,  of  course,  there  can  be  no  adequate  treatment  of 
this  aspect  without  taking  into  account  the  physiology  of  the 
brain  and  nervous  system,  the  physical  law  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy,  and  the  biological  doctrine  of  evolution.  Un- 
derlying the  scientific  form  of  the  discussion,  and  lending  it 
zest  and  interest,  are  always  the  deeper  ethical  and  spiritual 
issues  supposed  to  be  involved.  In  general  it  may  be  said 
that  the  discussion  takes  now  a  wider  range  than  ever  before, 
while  its  storm-center  for  the  present  is  the  relation  between 
mind  and  brain.  We  shall  find  it  convenient  to  take  up  first 
those  phases  of  the  subject  most  closely  related  to  physical 
science,  and  shall  then  consider  its  relation  to  modern  psy- 
chology, ethics  and  theology. 


FREE-WILL   AND   THE   PSYCHOPHYSICAL    QUESTION 

The  relation  between  mind  and  body  is  a  question  now 
well  to  the  fore  in  philosophical  discussion.  There  are  three 
generic  theories  now  current,  automatism,  parallelism  and 
interactionism,  and  these  have  historic  roots  in  the  specula- 
tions of  Descartes  and  his  successors.  Interactionism  is  the 
successor  of  Descartes'  hijiuxus  physicus ;  automatism  is 
an  application  to  man  of  his  mechanical  theory  of  animal 
movement;  while  parallelism  may  be  regarded  as  a  blending 
of  Spinoza's  monistic  theory  of  one  underlying  unknown 
substance  with  two  parallel  attributes,  and  of  Leibnitz'  plu- 
ralistic doctrine  of  monads  inaccessible  to  each  other's  influ- 
ence, but  mirroring  each  other's  movements  in  virtue  of  a 
pre-established  harmony. 

Modern  theories  are  often  held  in  a  tentative  form,  subject 
to  modification  by  epistomological  criticism.  Kant  found 
in  the  difficulties  which  beset  alike  the  ijijiiixus  physicus  and 
the  pre-established  harmony  and  the  supernatural  assistance 
theories  an  argument  for  his  own  theory  of  knowledge,  and 
set  the  question  in  a  new  form,  "  How  external  intuition  is 
possible  in  any  thinking  subject  ?  "  To  this  he  replied  : 
"No  human  being  can  return  an  answer."'  It  is  usual  for 
recent  writers  to  begin  with  brain-physiology  and  physics 
and  to  end  with  the  theory  of  knowledge. 

We  are  concerned  with  the  psychophysical  question  only 
in  so  far  as  it  affects  the  question  of  freedom.  Two  kinds 
of  freedom  may  here  be  distinguished :    freedom  of  expres- 

1  Critique  of  Pure  Reason.     Max  MuUer's  trans.,  1896,  p.  318. 
12  [142 


143]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  13 

sion,  or  the  ability  to  express  a  volition  in  bodily  move- 
ment; and  freedom  of  initiation,  or  the  ability  to  form  a 
purpose  without  being  determined  thereto  by  purely  physio- 
logical conditions.  The  first  question  is,  whether  conscious- 
ness enters  as  an  efficient  agent  into  the  time  and  space 
world ;  and  the  second  is,  whether  nervous  or  other  bodily 
processes  are  at  each  step  of  the  conscious  process  its  cause 
or  absolutely  determining  condition. 

Interactionism  admits  both  expressive  or  external,  and 
initiative  or  internal  freedom.  Consciousness  is  able  to  pro- 
duce changes  in  bodily  movement,  it  holds,  and  a  fortiori 
will  be  able  to  affect  its  own  course.  As  to  whether  this 
power  of  self  determination  is  to  be  understood  in  the  deter- 
ministic or  indeterministic  sense,  interactionism  leaves  an 
entirely  open  question. 

Automatism  holds  that  the  "  materials  of  consciousness 
are  the  products  of  cerebral  activity."  The  relation  is  that  of 
one-sided  dependence,  without  reciprocal  influence.  The 
pulses  of  thought  follow  one  another  like  the  sparks  from  an 
engine,  each  pulse  being  due,  not  to  an  influence  from  the 
previous  pulse,  but  directly  to  some  movement  in  brain 
molecules.  Consciousness  is  thus  doubly  inefficient,  unable 
even  to  afTect  its  own  course.  Freedom  in  either  sense  is 
excluded. 

Parallelism,  an  intermediate  doctrine,  would  explicitly 
deny  any  direct  influence  of  mind  upon  the  course  of  phys- 
ical events.  Whether  it  would  admit  any  power  of  initiative, 
or  spontaneity — any  freedom  from  the  trammels  of  mechan- 
ical law — would  depend  upon  the  extent  of  the  parallelism 
and  upon  its  ultimate  critical  interpretation.  If  there  are 
some  psychical  processes,  as  Wundt  and  Ziehen  hold,  for 
which  no  physical  correlate  can  be  found,  then  to  this  extent 
the  psychical  series  is  independent  of  the  chain  of  physical 
causation,  and   spontaneity  in  some  limited  degree  may  be 


14  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [144 

admitted.  Again,  if  the  parallelism  is  finally  resolved  into  a 
semblance,  we  have  a  theory  resembling  interactionism  in 
admitting  for  consciousness  a  certain  power  of  control  over 
its  own  processes  (initiative  freedom),  and  an  efficient  in- 
fluence over  the  other  elements  of  real  being  (expressive 
freedom).  Parallelism,  then,  in  its  immediate  bearing  upon 
the  question  of  freedom  in  these  two  senses,  is  more  or 
less  non-committal  and  plastic.  In  fact,  as  we  shall  no- 
tice, the  ambiguity  of  parallelism  at  this  point  may  be  urged 
against  its  acceptance  as  an  ultimate  theory. 

As  to  a  libertarian  freedom  of  choice  over  and  above  the 
spotaneity  or  initiative  freedom  we  have  noticed,  and  sup- 
posed to  be  distinguishable  from  it,  it  is  enough  here  to 
remark  that  its  possibility  is  denied  by  automatism  and  by 
parallelism  in  its  usual  form,  and  is  admitted  by  interaction- 
ism ;  while  direct  arguments  in  its  favor  must,  of  course,  be 
found  outside  the  range  of  psychophysical  discussion. 
Whether  it  is  compatible  with  any  form  of  parallelism  re- 
mains to  be  considered. 

A.  Automatism 

The  motto  of  automatism  is  that  thought  is  the  function 
of  the  brain,  or  conversely,  that  the  brain  is  the  organ  of 
mind.  The  new  sciences  of  physiological  and  experimental 
psychology  have  strongly  emphasized  the  dependence  of 
mind  upon  the  nervous  system,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that 
until  very  recent  years  the  currents  of  psychology  have  set 
strongly  in  the  automatist  direction. 

The  automatist's  motto  is  supported  by  many  undoubted 
facts.  It  has  been  shown  that  many  of  the  simpler  mental 
processes  are  connected  with  definite  portions  of  the  brain 
cortex,  and  that  diseased  brain-tissue  causes  an  impairment 
of  the  mental  power.  In  numberless  cases  of  insanity  post 
mortem   examination   has  shown   a  tumor   in   the  brain,   or 


145]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  15 

some  abnormality  of  brain  structure.  Physical  fatigue 
dulls  the  mental  powers,  and  narcotics  introduced  into  the 
brain  change  the  whole  character  of  the  mental  life. 
During  sound  sleep  and  in  the  trance  state,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  condition  before  birth  and  after  death,  conscious- 
ness seems  to  be  wholly  intermitted,  while  its  physical  con- 
comitant enjoys  an  unbroken  continuity.  Automatism  again 
does  away  with  the  inconvenient  interference  of  mind  in 
the  movements  of  matter,  and  so  far  harmonizes  with  the 
complete  mechanical  explanation  of  movement  for  which 
physical  science  seeks.  Alike  in  the  history  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  race,  the  development  of  mind  seems  dependent 
upon  that  of  the  body.  As  in  evolution,  the  inorganic  comes 
before  the  organic,  and  in  ontogenesis  the  developed  brain 
comes  before  consciousness,  the  law  of  parsimony  leads  us  to 
refer  the  origin  of  consciousness  to  the  material  particles 
organized  in  the  form  of  brain-cells,  and  its  processes  to 
molecular  movement  in  the  brain.  Thus,  in  its  origin  and 
history,  and,  it  would  seem,  in  its  destiny,  the  conscious  life 
is  inextricably  bound  up  with  matter  and  its  laws.  If  the  self 
is  but  a  phase  of  a  complicated  arrangement  of  highly 
evolved  matter,  the  belief  in  its  substantiality,  its  moral  free- 
dom, or  its  continued  existence  seems  manifestly  absurd. 

The  eclipse  of  spiritual  belief  with  which  philosophy  was 
threatened  by  the  automatist  doctrine  was  fully  appreciated 
by  Mr.  Huxley,  its  leading  champion,  and  was  thus  ex- 
pressed in  a  classical  passage  :' 

"  The  consciousness  of  this  great  truth  [that  the  physiol- 
ogy of  the  future  would  extend  the  realm  of  matter  and  law 
over  the  mental  sphere]  weighs  like  a  nightmare,  I  believe, 
upon  many  of  the  best  minds  of  these  days.  They  watch 
what  they  conceive  to  be  the  progress  of  materialism,  in  such 
fear  and  powerless  anger  as  a  savage  feels,  when,  during  an 

'  "  The  Physical  Basis  of  Life,"  Fortnightly  Review,  Feb.,  1869. 


1 5  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [  146 

eclipse,  a  great  shadow  creeps  over  the  face  of  the  sun.  The 
advancing  tide  of  matter  threatens  to  drown  their  souls ; 
the  tightening  grasp  of  law  impedes  their  freedom ;  they  are 
alarmed  lest  man's  moral  nature  be  debased  by  the  increase 
of  his  wisdom," 

Mr.  Huxley,  as  is  well  known,  escapes  from  the  consequences 
of  a  materialism  which,  as  he  says,  "  may  paralyze  the  ener- 
gies and  destroy  the  beauty  of  a  life,"  by  covering  the  mate- 
rialistic features  of  his  theory  with  the  modest  veil  of  agnos- 
ticism. If  we  know  matter  as  it  really  is,  and  further,  can 
perceive  in  cause  and  efifect,  not  simply  a  sequence,  but  a 
necessary  sequence,  he  sees  no  escape  from  utter  materialism 
and  necessarianism.  But,  he  asks,  "  after  all,  what  do  we 
know  of  this  terrible  '  matter,'  except  as  a  name  of  the  un- 
known and  hypothetical  cause  of  states  of  our  own  con- 
sciousness?" This  modest  disavowal  of  knowledge  of  what 
the  brain  really  is,  is  not,  however,  in  itself  enough  to  assure 
us  of  the  efficiency  of  mind.  If  the  relation  of  thought,  as  we 
know  it,  to  brain,  as  we  know  it,  is  always  that  of  one-sided 
dependence,  agnosticism  alone  will  not  suffice  to  dispel  the 
fatalistic  inference.  We  are  not  surprised  that  Mr.  Huxley 
himself  felt  impelled,  doubtless  by  the  advancing  tide  of 
matter,  to  qualify  the  declaration  of  his  original  address  that 
"  our  volition  counts  for  something,  as  a  condition  of  the 
course  of  events,"'  by  the  insertion  some  twenty  years  later 
of  the  foot-note  "  or  to  speak  more  accurately,  the  physical 
state  of  which  our  volition  is  the  expression."' 

Against  the  automatist's  argument  in  favor  of  a  one-sided 
dependence  of  thought  upon  the  brain,  and  its  fatalistic 
corollaries,  may  be  urged  objections  from  the  standpoint  of 
common  sense,  of  morality,  and  of  scientific  generalization. 

'  Fortnightly  Review,  1869,  p.  145. 

*  Collected  Essays,  1892,  vol.  i,  p.  163,  note.  See  V^zr A,  Naturalism  and  Ag- 
nosticism,  vol.  ii,  p.  54. 


147]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTfON  ^j 

That  such  a  dependence  exists  at  least  in  the  case  of  sensa 
tion,  is  shown  by  Mr.  Huxley's  familiar  experiment  of  prick- 
ing one's  self  v/ith  a  pin/  The  pin-prick  evidently  precedes 
the  pain,  and,  by  a  simple  application  of  Mill's  "  method  of 
difiference,"  is  shown  to  be  the  cause  of  the  pain.  A  similar 
dependence  of  mental  process  upon  nervous  process  is  de- 
clared (contrary  to  popular  impression)  to  hold  in  the  case 
of  emotion  and  volition.  Interactionism  repHes  that  the  pin- 
prick experiment  proves,  if  it  proves  anything,  that  there  is 
not  one-sided  dependence,  but  reciprocal  action  between 
mind  and  brain.  The  same  reasoning  exactly,  which  shows 
that  the  pin-prick  is  the  cause  of  the  sensation,  will  prove 
that  the  volition  to  make  the  experiment  is  the  cause  of  the 
movement  of  the  hand  and  arm  which  follows.  It  is,  of 
course,  impossible  at  preseut  to  show  that  the  volitional 
brain-movement  follows  the  volition,  but  it  is  equally  impos- 
sible to  show  the  excitement  of  the  sensational  brain-centre 
precedes  the  pain. 

The  "  dynamic  quality  of  ideas"  as  shown  in  the  hypnotic 
suggestion  weighs  against  automatism.  The  idea  of  a  burn 
suggested  to  the  hypnotic  subject  is  followed  by  a  real  scari- 
fication of  the  tissues,  and  the  result,  mysterious  at  best,  be- 
comes wholly  unaccountable  if  we  exclude  as  efficient  factors 
both  the  thought  of  the  hypnotist  and  that  of  the  subject. 

The  antinomy  between  automatism  and  morality  may  be  il- 
lustrated from  Mr.  Huxley's  Romanes  Lecture.  In  an  utterance 
which  has  given  aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemies  of  natural- 
ism he  intimated  that  the  "  cosmic  process  "  "  has  no  sort  of 
relation  to  moral  ends."  "  Let  us  understand,  once  for  all, 
that  the  ethical  progress  of  society  depends,  not  on  imitating 
the  cosmic  process,  still  less  in  running  away  from  it,  but  in 
combatting  it."  =■     But  moral  sentiments,  we  must  remember, 

^  See  Collected  Essays,  vol,  i,  pp.  238-240. 
*  Evolution  and  Ethics,  p.  83. 


1 8  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [148 

like  all  conscious  processes,  are  the  products  of  cerebral 
activity.  The  brain,  then,  though  its  movements  are  unques- 
tionably a  part  of  the  non-moral  "  cosmic  process,"  generates 
a  moral  imperative  which  commands  that  the  cosmic  process 
be  combatted.  Apart  from  this  difificulty  in  Mr.  Huxle3''s 
system,  it  needs  no  argument  to  show  that  there  is  a  contra- 
diction between  the  ethical  principles  which  he  so  nobly 
advocates  and  the  fatalistic  inferences  to  which  his  automat- 
ism easily  leads. 

The  physiological  postulate  of  automatism — thought  is  a 
function  of  the  brain — is  opposed  not  only  by  the  common 
sense  view  of  reciprocal  influence,  but  by  the  leading  gener- 
alizations of  physics  and  biology.  As  regards  the  conservation 
of  energy.  Professor  HofTding  clearly  outlines  the  situation : 

"  The  supposition  that  a  casual  relation  may  exist  between 
the  mental  and  the  material  is  contrary  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  '  persistence  of  energy.'  For  at  the  point  where  the  ma- 
terial nerve-process  should  be  converted  into  mental  activity, 
a  sum  of  physical  energy  would  disappear  without  the  loss 
being  made  good  by  a  corresponding  sum  of  physical  en- 
ergy  

"  Of  course,  there  is  always  one  way  of  escape — to  deny 
the  doctrine  of  energy.  This  doctrine  is  not  experimentally 
proved,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  cannot,  strictly  speaking,  ever 
be  proved.  But  according  to  the  general  rules  of  method- 
ology, we  may  not,  in  forming  our  hypotheses  and  judging 
of  them  when  formed,  enter  into  conflict  with  leading  scien- 
tific principles.  And  in  modern  natural  science  the  doc- 
trine of  energy  is  such  a  leading  principle.  If,  therefore,  an 
hypothesis  is  in  conflict  with  this  doctrine,  the  fact  tells  at 
once  decidedly  against  it."  ' 

To  the  argument  indicated  above,  the  automatist,  so  far  as 
we  know,  has  given  no  satisfactory  answer.     Automatism,  sin- 

*  Outlines  of  Psychology,  pp.  55  and  58. 


1^9]  "^^^  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  19 

gularly  enough,  finds  in  the  mechanical  view  of  the  world  one 
of  its  strongest  opponents.  It  cannot  hold  its  ground  against 
parallelism  (and  has  not  done  so),  because  parallelism  pro- 
vides for  the  completeness  and  inviolability  of  the  mechan- 
ism better  than  automatism.  Further,  it  is  not  open  to  the 
automatist,  as  it  is  conceivably  to  the  interactionist,  to  deny 
the  universality  of  the  law  of  conservation,  or,  with  Spencer, 
to  correlate  mental  with  physical  "  energy,"  because  this  is 
to  give  up  the  mechanical  principle  upon  which  automatism 
is  based.  Another  of  the  great  generalizations  of  modern 
science,  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  is,  we  shall  find,  unfriendly 
to  automatism,  but  consideration  of  this  point  may  conve- 
niently be  postponed  to  another  chapter. 

B.     Parallelism 

Parallelism,  as  contrasted  with  automatism,  has  the  advan- 
tage of  keeping  intact  the  doctrine  of  the  conservation  of  en- 
ergy, of  avoiding  the  difficulties  of  conceiving  causal  inter- 
course between  matter  and  mind,  and  of  providing,  at  least 
apparently,  for  a  real  activity  and  continuity  of  consciousness. 
As  the  conscious  series  goes  along  by  itself,  according  to  its 
own  laws,  and  uninfluenced  by  the  physical  series,  mind  is 
seemingly  endowed  with  spontaneity  and  efficiency,  at  least, 
within  the  sphere  of  its  own  movement. 

When  we  examine  more  closely,  however,  we  see  that  the 
freedom  possible  under  the  theory  in  its  usual  form  is  a  van- 
ishing quantity.  In  the  first  place,  mind  can  have  no  influ- 
ence over  bodily  action;  all  the  deeds  done  in  the  body  are 
determined  by  physical  antecedents,  governed  strictly  by 
physical  law.  The  purpose  of  the  statesman,  the  benevolence 
of  the  philanthropist,  the  hatred  of  the  murderer,  the  ideal  of 
the  artist,  cannot,  strictly  speaking,  have  the  slightest  influence 
upon  the  expression  of  these  mental  phenomena  in  the 
material  world.     And,  secondly,  even  in  the  closed  circle  of 


20 


THE  FREE-  WILL  PR  OBLEM  [150 


thought-life  there  seems  no  room  for  any  real  spontaneity. 
From  the  standpoint  of  brain-movement  the  conscious  pro- 
cess at  each  step  takes  its  cue  from  the  concomitant  cortical 
process,  and  as  the  cortical  process  is  controlled  wholly  by 
mechanical  law,  parallelism  in  this  view,  equally  with  au- 
tomatism, reduces  consciousness  to  the  position  of  a  boat 
floating  "  oarless  and  rudderless  "  upon  the  stream  of  phys- 
ical change.  It  becomes  simply  a  passive  spectator  of  its 
own  processes,  unable  to  influence  its  own  course.  The 
difficulties  of  parallelism  as  so  construed  lead  many  of  its 
advocates  (Ziehen,  Wundt,  Hoffding,  Paulsen,  Stout)  to  sub- 
ject it  to  further  criticism,  with  the  result  that  the  physical 
series  is  ultimately  dispensed  with,  and  some  form  of  "  pan- 
psychism"  or  "critical  monism"  takes  the  place  of  the 
original  parallelism. 

As  so  reconstructed,  parallelism  allows  equally  with  inter- 
actionism  for  the  power  both  of  mental  initiative  and  out- 
ward expression.  Consciousness  becomes  the  primary  and 
determining  factor,  and  is  in  interaction  with  those  elements 
of  real  being  which  the  physical  series  symbolizes.  Em- 
phasis, we  find,  must  inevitably  be  laid  upon  one  or  the  other 
of  the  two  parallels.  If  both  have  an  equal  footing  in  reality, 
we  cannot  rest  in  the  thought  that  they  are  so  bound  together 
as  to  be  in  constant  juxtaposition,  and  yet  so  held  apart  as 
to  be  totally  inaccessible  to  each  other's  influence.  We 
must  go  back  to  interactionism,  or  else  we  must  give  one 
series  preference  over  the  other.  Ultimately,  then,  we  find 
that  but  two  species  of  parallelism  are  really  held,  material- 
istic or  epiphenomenist  parallelism,  and  idealistic  parallelism. 
The  first  makes  mind  a  property  or  subordinate  aspect  of 
matter,  "  a  subjective  phase  of  certain  objective  phenomena," 
and  is  opposed  to  freedom  in  any  sense  ;  the  second  regards 
matter  and  mechanism  as  mental  symbols  of  some  extra- 
material  and  extra-mechanical  reality,  and  leaves  the  way 
open  for  further  discussion  of  the  free-will  problem. 


I  5  I  ]  THE  PS  YCHOPHYSICAL  Q  UESTION  2 1 

Overlooking  the  logical  instability  in  the  doctrine,  let  us 
look  at  it  in  its  most  general  or  unmodified  form,  and  com- 
pare it  in  its  advantages  and  defects  with  the  rival  theory  of 
interaction.  We  shall  consider  briefly  :  i.  What  parallelism 
means.  2.  The  question  of  its  extent.  3.  Facts  in  its  sup- 
port.    4.  Objections  to  it. 

I.  When  it  is  said  that  changes  in  the  content  of  con- 
sciousness and  changes  in  nervous  or  brain  tissue  are  "  par- 
allel," the  assertion  must  mean  (a)  that  there  are  features  in 
each  series  of  events  which  exactly  correspond  to  features  in 
the  other  series,  and  (b)  that  correponding  events  in  the 
two  series  occur  simultaneously. 

So  far  as  the  parallelism  extends  (a  question  to  be  after- 
ward noticed)  a  definite  change  in  consciousness  must  have 
a  definite  change  in  nervous  tissue  corresponding  to  it  and 
vice  versa.  To  the  mental  changes  Wj  m^  m^,  the  bodily 
changes  b^  b^  b^,  must  exactly  correspond. 


mi 

fTt^ 

W3 

h 

Bs 

h 

h 

:--'K--. 

h 

If  at  any  point  in  the  mental  series  m^,  the  corresponding 
physical  movement  may  be  indifferently  b^  or  ^3  (see  dia- 
gram), the  parallelism  is  broken.  For  if  two  different  physi- 
cal events,  b^  and  B^,  may  indififerently  be  parallel  with  m^, 
why  not  a  dozen?  or  to  reverse  the  question,  why  to  a  given 
physical  event  br^,  may  not  two  or  more  mental  events  corre- 
spond? If  two  objects  move  always  in  parallel  lines  (to  refer 
to  our  mathematical  metaphor),  the  direction  in  which  one 
moves  determines  absolutely  the  direction  in  which  the  other 
must  move.  In  other  words,  so  far  as  parallelism  between 
brain-movement  and  thought  extends,  a  competent  interpre- 


2  2  THE  FR EE-  WILL  PR OBLEM  [152 

ter  observing  either  series,  could  translate  it  with  absolute 
accuracy  into  terms  of  the  other  series. 

In  time  the  relation  between  corresponding  events  in  the 
two  series  must  be  that  of  exact  simultaneity.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  the  mental  state  of  an  angry  man  about  to  strike  a 
blow  is  analyzable  at  a  given  instant,  into  sensational,  emo- 
tional and  volitional  elements,  and  that  the  complex  state  has 
an  equally  complex  correlate  in  the  ne*vous  series.  Plainly 
the  total  physical  event,  said  to  be  parallel  with  the  mental 
event,  must  be  precisely  simultaneous  with  it.  If  the  sensa- 
tional element  of  the  total  mental  'sX.'aX.q  follows  its  correlative 
brain- movement,  while  the  volitional  element  of  the  mental 
complex  precedes  its  brain-correlate,  the  two  series  do  not 
proceed  pari  passu.  The  relation  between  them  would  be 
similar  to  that  which  exists  between  the  tempo  of  a  circus 
band  and  the  movements  of  the  waltzing  elephant.  Again, 
if  conscious  changes  always  follow,  by  an  interval  however 
small,  the  corresponding  brain-changes,  the  state  of  the  case 
cannot  properly  be  called  parallelism ;  for  the  term  then  will 
mean  the  same  as  automatism,  from  which  itvi^as  supposed  to 
be  distinguished.  If  parallelism  is  to  take  rank  as  a  separate 
theory,  it  must  always  connote  a  definite  correspondence, 
and  an  exact  simultaneity  between  the  parallel  series.' 

2.  The  extent  to  which  consciousness  and  physical  phe- 
nomena may  be  said  to  be  parallel,  is  a  question  which  con- 
cerns primarily  the  relation  between  conscious  processes  and 
processes  in  the  cortex,  or  gray  matter,  of  the  brain.  But 
even  here  there  maybe  processes  on  both  sides  which  find  no 
concomitant  on  the  other.  Ziehen  holds  that  there  are 
"  numberless   material  processes  of  the  cortex,  which  take 

^  Professor  C.  A.  Strong  remarks  (  Why  the  Mind  Has  a  Body,  p.  159)  :  "  If 
the  interactionist  would  but  admit  the  simultaneity  of  the  pairs  of  events,  the  par- 
allelist  woul<l  have  him  at  his  mercy;  but  if  he  persists  in  liolding  them  to  be 
successive,  I  do  not  see  how  the  issue  can  be  decided  by  any  means  known  to  nat- 
ural science." 


153]  ^-^^  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  23 

place  without  the  concomitance  of  psychical  processes."  On 
the  other  hand,  he  finds  nothing  in  the  brain-process  corres- 
ponding to  the  perception  of  time  and  space  relations.' 
Wundt  holds  that  all  organic  (including  brain)  processes  have 
a  conscious  concomitant,  but  exempts  from  the  law  of 
physical  concomitance,  "  the  more  complicated  products  of 
our  mental  life,"  and  "  the  general  intellectual  powers  which 
are  the  necessary  pre-supposition  of  those  products."^ 
Stout  ultimately  holds  to  a  complete  parallelism  on  both 
sides.  Every  mental  and  every  physical  event  finds  its  con- 
comitant in  the  other  series.^ 

Reflection  will  show  that  a  thorogoing  parallelism  com- 
plete on  both  sides  is  the  only  one  which  can  keep  unim- 
paired the  law  of  conservation,  and  really  exclude  mutual 
influence.  Assuming  that  there  are  physical  events  with  no 
conscious  correlate,  the  change  in  this  region  may  set  up 
change  in  the  region  paralleled  by  consciousness,  and  so 
initiate  a  change  in  the  conscious  series.  But  the  conscious 
change  thus  begun,  having  nothing  in  the  previous  conscious 
series  to  explain  it,  will  either  be  uncaused  (thus  denying 
the  causal  law),  or  must  be  referred  to  the  influence  of  the 
physical  changes,  thus  returning  to  the  difficulty  of  interac- 
action.  On  the  other  hand,  imagine  a  philosopher  to  be 
so  absorbed  in  speculation  about  the  stars  that  he  walks 
unwittingly  into  a  well.  Here  the  higher  intellectual 
operations,  which  we  now  assume  to  have  no  physi- 
cal correlate,  afifect  the  ordinary  sensory-motor  consciou- 
ness,  and  so  by  hypothesis  affect  the  character  of  the 
concomitant  molecular  movements  in  the  brain.  In  this 
case  the  nature  of  brain-activity — if  not  the  amount,  at  least 
the  direction  of  motion — is  due  ultimately  to  an  event  which 

*  Introduction  to  Physiological  Psychology,  pp.  275,  277. 
'  Human  and  Animal  Psychology,  p.  447. 
'  Manual  of  Psychology,  p.  52. 


2 A  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [154 

was  exclusively  mental,  and  the  law  of  conservation  is  as 
much  endangered  by  the  incompleteness  of  the  parallelism 
as  it  would  be  by  an  avowed  interactionism. 

If  we  are  to  safeguard  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  en- 
ergy, in  the  interests  of  which  the  parallelist  theory  has  been 
adopted,  we  must  assume  that  every  event  in  the  physical 
world  finds  its  correlate  in  the  mental  world,  and  vice  versa. 
There  must  be  a  conscious  concomitant  of  the  "  concentrat- 
ing nebulae  "  as  well  as  a  physical  correlate  of  the  "  thoughts 
of  poets."  Many  parallelists  shrink  from  taking  up  the  bur- 
den of  metaphysical  assumption  thus  demanded,  but  if  they 
are  in  earnest  about  the  law  of  conservation,  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  the  burden  can  be  avoided. 

3.  Parallelism  claims  to  find  a  double  support  in  the  facts 
of  physiology  and  physics.  For  the  proof  of  the  concomit- 
ance of  nervous  and  conscious  processes  it  goes  to  physi- 
ology, and  for  the  proof  of  their  "  hermetic  closure,"  as 
regards  causal  influence,  to  physics.  Strictly  speaking,  par- 
allelism is  lacking  in  any  direct  empirical  support.  Science 
has  shown  with  increasing  clearness  and  certainty  the  intimacy 
of  the  connection  between  mind  and  brain,  but  has  not  yet 
disclosed  the  nature  of  that  connection.  Modern  neurology 
and  comparative  physiology  do  not  of  themselves  suggest 
the  parallelist's  interpretation,  but  have  supplied  a  number 
of  facts,  both  in  broader  outline  and  in  minute  detail,  which 
may  be  conveniently  viewed  through  parallelist's  glasses, 
and  used  to  support  one  side  of  the  parallelist's  contention 
— the  invariable  concomitance  of  mental  and  physical  action. 
For  the  other  side — mutual  inaccessibility — the  disparity  of 
the  two  sets  of  phenomena  and,  in  particular,  the  law  of  the 
conservation  of  energy,  are  invoked.  Parallelism,  of  course, 
finds  negative  support  in  the  difficulties  of  the  other  theo- 
ries. The  advantages  clamied  for  it  are  that  it  takes  account 
of  the  facts  of  physiology  and  does  full  justice  to  the  gene- 


155]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  2 5 

ralization  of  physics,  avoiding  the  logical  difficulty  of  con- 
necting disparate  phenomena,  and  that  it  is  of  great  practi- 
cal convenience  as  a  working  hypothesis. 

4.  Over  against   these    advantages    are    some   objections 
which  may  be  briefly  noted. 

( I  )  There  is  a  difficulty  from  which  parallelism  and  inter- 
actionism  alike  suffer,  growing  out  of  the  inaccessibility  to 
observation  of  brain-action.  There  is  no  empirical  proof 
that  all  movements  in  the  brain  are  due  to  mechanical 
causes,  nor  is  there  evidence  that  all  psychical  events  have 
exact  physical  correlates.  Analogy  from  the  principle  of 
the  "  summation  of  stimuli,"  before  a  conscious  effect  is 
produced,  suggests  the  possibility  of  mental  processes  so 
faint  as  to  be  without  brain-influence.  Again,  the  complex- 
ity both  of  the  mental  processes  and  of  brain  activity  forbid 
at  present  the  coordination  of  the  two  with  any  degree  of 
exactness.  An  ideal  empirical  proof  of  parallelism  would 
consist  in  a  complete  analysis  of  a  complex  mental  state  and 
the  exhibition  of  corresponding  features  in  the  complex  of 
associated  molecular  brain-movement — an  almost  hopeless 
task  to  an  observer  to  whose  view  both  the  cerebral  process 
and  the  mental  process  were  completely  open.  But,  at 
present,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  we  do  not  know  tu hat  takes 
place  within  the  brain.  That  there  is  always  some  activity 
of  the  brain  in  some  relation  to  consciousness  is  the  common 
opinion  of  all  schools,  but  we  do  not  know  in  exactly  what 
part  of  the  brain,  if  not  all,  this  related  activity  occurs,  nor, 
in  the  appropriate  part  or  parts,  do  we  know  in  what  pre- 
cisely the  activity  consists.  This  is  an  objection  to  the 
provability  of  parallelism,  rather  than  to  its  truth. 

(2)  Some  facts  of  brain-physiology  tend  at  least  to 
disprove  the  parallelist  assumption.  A  thorogoing  local- 
ization of  brain-functions,  while  consistent  with  other  theo- 
ries, would  be  favorable  to  parallelism.     Some  of  the  freaks 


26  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [156- 

of  memory  favor  the  view  that  each  word,  or  even  letter,  has 
its  exact  pigeon-hole  in  some  brain-cell,  and  the  capacity  to 
reproduce  words  by  speech  or  writing  is  found  to  be  de- 
stroyed by  lesions  in  definite  areas  of  the  cortex.  Motor 
centers,  also,  have  been  mapped  out  with  much  definiteness 
in  the  case  of  animals,  and  approximately  in  the  case  of  man. 
When  we  come  to  the  higher  intellectual  functions,  how- 
ever, we  are  left  more  in  doubt.  Many  physiologists  here 
deny  localization  altogether,  holding  that  the  entire  hemi- 
sphere is  active.  Some  (the  phrenological  school)  locate  the 
intellectual  functions  in  the  frontal  lobes,  others  (Carpenter, 
Bastian,  Hughlings  Jackson')  in  the  posterior  lobes.  Says 
Professor  Loeb :  "  Experiments  on  the  brain  indicate  that 
while  there  exists  to  a  certain  extent  an  anatomical  localiza- 
tion in  the  cortex,  the  assumption  of  a  psychical  localization 

is  contradicted  by  the  facts 

"  This  agrees  [referring  to  the  experiments  of  Goltz  on 
dogs]  with  the  idea  that  in  the  processes  of  association  the 
cerebral  hemispheres  act  as  a  whole,  and  not  as  a  mosaic  of 
a  number  of  independent  parts."  ^ 

We  are  then  unable  to  say  with  certainty  how  extensive  is 
the  brain-activity  assumed  to  accompany  a  given  thought,  or 
in  what  part  of  the  brain  it  is  located.  Sir  M.  Foster,  speak- 
ing of  the  phenomena  shown  by  animals  with  parts  of  the 
brain  removed,  says  "we  cannot  fix  on  any  linear  barrier  in 
the  brain  or  general  nervous  system,  and  say  '  beyond  this 
there  is  volition  and  intelligence,  but  up  to  this  there  is 
none.*  "  3  The  failure  of  localization  would  leave  us  in  the 
dark  as  to  the  nervous  concomitants,  say,  of  love  and  hate, 
and  in  the  present  state  of  physiological  doctrine  we  should 

^  Hollander :  Mental  Futidions  of  the  Brain,  p.  24. 
'  Comparative  Physiology  of  the  Brain,  p.  262. 
^  Text- Book  of  Physiology,  1897,  p.  1081. 


1^7]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  27 

be  shut  up  to  crude  speculation  of  the  "  right-hand-spiral- 
motion  "  and  "left-hand-spiral-motion"  order. 

The  phenomena  of  psychical  supply  {supplmnce)  or  "vi- 
carious functioning"  are  certainly  a  stumbling-block  to  par- 
allelism. As  in  a  factory  where  division  of  labor  exists,  one 
skilled  laborer  may,  on  occasion,  take  the  place  of  another, 
so,  within  limits,  the  functions  of  lost  parts  of  the  brain  are 
gradually  assumed  by  others.  Here  the  conscious  activity, 
when  regained — the  sensation  or  motor  impulse — is  essen- 
tially the  same  as  before,  while  the  associated  brain-move- 
ment is  entirely  different ;  and  this  is  true  whether  the  orig- 
inal brain-correlate  was  definitely  localized,  or  was  a  coor- 
dinated activity  of  the  entire  cortex.  We  have  to  conclude 
that  a  given  conscious  process  can  take  place  equally  well 
with  either  of  two  essentially  different  physical  concomitants, 
thus  doing  away  with  the  exact  correspondence  which  paral- 
lelism demands. 

(3)  When  we  compare  the  two  sets  of  phenomena  and 
observe  their  difference,  it  is  as  hard  to  believe  in  exact  cor- 
respondence between  the  two  as  in  their  causal  interaction. 
The  subjective  accentuation  of  rhythm,  while  possibly  capa- 
ble of  a  physical  explanation,  may  be  a  case  in  point.  "  The 
very  time-rhythm  of  psychical  processes  does  not  imme- 
diately follow  the  nervous  processes,  even  when  these  are 
rhythmic,  as  in  the  case  of  reflexes,"  '  The  arrangement  of 
our  sense-perceptions  under  the  forms  of  time  and  space, 
the  logical  activities  of  comparison  and  inference,  and  the 
"synthetic  unity  of  apperception  "  are  mental  operations  for 
which  a  proper  physical  correlate  is  difficult  to  conceive. 
One  series  is  subject  to  quantitative  measurement,  and  its 
energy  is  constant  in  amount.  The  other  has  no  exact 
quantitative  character,  but,  so  far  as  quantitative  terms  may 
be    applied  to   it,    its    knowledge  may  grow  from  more  to 

'  Rhiel :   Science  and  Metaphysics,  p.  186. 


2  8  '^H^  FREE-  WILL  PR  OBLEM  [158 

more,  and  its  progress  in  morality  be  indefinitely  advanced. 
The  suspense  and  delay  of  deliberation,  the  power  of 
postponing  reaction  to  stimulus,  is  contrary  to  all  that 
we  know  of  purely  physical  or  automatic  action.  The 
interval  which  separates  stimulus  and  reaction,  where  delib- 
eration intervenes,  is  inexplicable  on  the  theory  that  the 
brain  has  a  purely  automatic  action,  "  uninfluenced  by  states 
of  consciousness."  The  great  difference,  in  short,  between 
the  two  associated  processes  is  that  one  is  mechanical,  the 
other  teleological,  and  the  task  of  parallelism  is  to  show  how 
the  two  processes,  while  so  different  that  they  cannot  inter- 
act, are  yet  so  much  alike  that  one  can  be  perfectly  corre- 
lated with  the  other.  Certainly  the  differences  mentioned 
weigh  as  heavily  against  a  theory  of  exact  concomitance  as 
against  one  of  interaction. 

(4)  Both  series  fall  into  discontinuity  when  mutual  influ- 
ence is  denied.  Whence  comes  the  sensation  of  light  ? 
Not  from  the  sun  or  the  electric  current,  according  to  paral- 
lelism, for  these  physical  phenomena  do  not  influence  the 
world  of  consciousness.  Not  from  anything  that  we  knew 
of  in  the  previous  state  of  consciousness,  for  of  the  coming 
sensation  we  often  have  no  premonition.  The  obvious  ex- 
planation is  denied  us,  and  we  are  compelled  to  suppose, 
"  that  it  is  not  the  physical  stimulus  which  occasions 
the  sensation,  but  that  this  latter  arises  from  some 
elementary  psychical  processes,  lying  below  the  limen  of 
consciousness."  ^  Even  so  we  are  left  in  doubt  whether 
these  hypothetical  "  elementary  processes "  belong  to  the 
individual  consciousness,  or  to  the  consciousness-in-general 
which  is  supposed  to  parallel  the  world  of  organic  or  phys- 
ical movement. 

A  similar  gap  is  left  upon  the  physical  side  when  mental 
influence  is  denied.     Paley's  illustration  of  the  watch  may  be 

*  Wundt :  Human  and  Animal  Psychology,  p.  450. 


159]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  29 

antiquated  as  an  argument  for  design  in  nature,  but  it  is 
hard  to  believe  that  the  purpose  of  the  designer  had  no 
effect  in  the  production  of  the  watch  itself.  If  "  the  brain 
has  an  automatic  action  uninfluenced  by  states  of  conscious- 
ness," the  purpose  of  the  engineer  had  no  direct  influence 
upon  the  construction  and  form,  for  example,  of  the  Brook- 
lyn Bridge.  We  must  substitute  in  this  case  the  causality  of 
certain  elaborate  brain-processes  which  accompanied  the 
engineer's  planning  and  calculation.  But  the  correspond- 
ence between  the  mental  purpose  and  its  realization  in  the 
completed  structure  is  so  exact  and  impressive  that  the 
efficiency  of  the  former  must  in  some  sense,  be  admitted. 
The  bridge  as  it  stands  shows  purpose  unmistakably.  It 
cannot  be  the  result  of  a  "  fortuitous  concourse  "  of  mate- 
rials. If  efficiency  be  denied  in  the  case  of  the  engineer's 
purpose,  then  mental  efficiency  must  be  brought  in  further 
up  the  stream,  and  the  exact  correspondence  between  en- 
gineer's purpose  and  material  bridge  must  be  due  to  a  har- 
mony pre-established  by  cosmic  intelligence,  "  If  the  con- 
comitance of  cortical  and  conscious  processes  is  regarded  as 
an  ultimate  principle,  it  is  simply  a  miracle." ' 

Sober  parallelists  do  not  assert  that  either  process  would 
go  along  by  itself  if  unaccompanied  by  the  other. 


A 

d 


}-{1}-{n 

ABC,  the  physical  series, 
a  b  c,  the  conscious  series. 

In  the  accompanying  diagram,  the  physical  term  A  would 
not  be  followed  by  B,  unless  A  had  its  psychical  concomit- 
ant a.  A  alone  then  would  not  produce  B,  while  Aa  would 
do  so.  How  then  can  a  be  excluded  from  causal  influence? 
It  is  an  indispensable  antecedent  of  B,  an  essential  condition, 

^  Stout,  op.  cit,,  p.  51. 


30  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [i6o 

and  we  have  as  little  right  to  exclude  it  from  causal  efficiency 
as  we  have  in  case  of  the  other  condition  A.  It  is  not 
held,  on  the  other  hand,  that  in  the  search  for  a  word  or 
name,  the  psychical  series  could  go  along  unaccompanied  by 
physical  concomitants.  The  conscious  event  h,  the  recalling 
of  the  word,  occurs  only  if  it  is  preceded  by  Aa,  for  if  the 
appropriate  cortical  centre  is  extirpated  memory  is  destroyed. 
How,  again,  we  ask,  can  A,  an  essential  and  indispensable 
antecedent,  be  denied  causal  participation  in  the  production 
of  bV  For  certain  purposes  the  series  ABC,  or  the  series 
abc,  might  be  treated  as  independent;  but  in  either  case 
there  would  be  yawning  gaps  to  fill. 

It  must  be  noticed,  in  passing,  that  the  facts  of  intersub- 
jective  intercourse  become  doubly  mysterious  on  the  prin- 
ciples of  parallelism.  The  only  known  avenues  of  know- 
ledge and  communication,  through  gesture,  touch  and  sound, 
are  by  hypothesis  barred  at  both  ends.  Instead,  as  a  chan- 
nel of  communication  between  different  minds,  is  substituted 
a  "system  of  immaterial  agency,"  supposed  to  parallel  the 
physical  world.  A  piece  of  circular  reasoning  seems  to  be 
involved  in  this  assumption.  The  strongest,  if  not  the  sole, 
evidence  we  have  for  the  existence  of  any  such  immaterial 
system  is  the  belief  in  other  minds.  Yet  we  get  at  the 
other  minds,  in  the  way  of  knowledge  and  influence, 
through  the  medium  of  their  bodies.*  How,  then,  can 
the  belief  in  other  minds,  so  reached,  be  made  the  pre- 
mise of  an  argument  for  the  existence  of  an  immaterial  sys- 
tem underlying  the  physical  world  as  "  thing  in  itself,"  and 
taking  the  place  of  the  body  as  a  link  of  intercourse  and 
influence  between  minds? 

(5)   The  opponent  of  parallelism  might  stake  his  whole 

'  These  remarks  were  suggested  by  Bradley's  criticism  of  automatism.     Appear- 
ance  and  Reality,  pp.  327-329. 

*  So  Bradley,  op.  cit.,  p.  255.     And  see  Ward,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  239. 


1 6 1  ]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  Q  UESTION  3  I 

case  upon  the  bare  fact  of  knowledge.  Both  the  physical  and 
the  psychical  series  are  equally  objects  of  knowledge,  other- 
wise there  would  be  no  question  of  the  two  parallels.  But 
knowledge,  however  interpreted,  involves  an  influential  rela- 
tion between  the  knower  and  the  thing  known.  According 
to  natural  realism,  the  world  of  perception  is  a  real  external 
world,  which  is  the  cause  of  the  perception.  If  the  physical 
world  is  purely  phenomenal,  the  relation  is  reversed,  and 
the  world  becomes  the  effect  of  mental  activity.  If  behind 
physical  phenomena  there  is  an  unknown  x,  or  thing-in- itself, 
then  this  x  is  in  interaction  with  mind  in  producing  phe- 
nomena. If,  finally,  the  physical  world  (including  brain 
and  nerves)  is  nothing  more  than  "  perceptions,  actual  or 
possible,"  as  phenomenism  asserts,  then,  corresponding  to  a 
perception  in  the  mind  of  A,  there  would  be  no  brain-event 
except  a  possible  perception  in  the  mind  of  a  hypothetical 
anatomist  B;  and  this  perception,  if  it  occurred,  would  not 
be  simultaneous  with  A's  perception,  and,  besides,  there 
would  be  but  one  class  of  reality — mental. 

Parallelism  is  then  reduced  to  this  dilemma:  Either  the 
physical  world,  supposed  to  be  parallel  with  mind,  is  only 
a  fact  of  consciousness ;  or,  if  outside  of  consciousness,  it 
is  either  a  real  world  directly  known  and  so  in  influential  re- 
lations with  consciousness,  or  it  is  an  unknowable  thing-in- 
itself,  also  in  influential  relations  with  consciousness  in  the 
production  of  phenomena.  In  any  case  the  parallelism  of 
two  mutually  exclusive  series  vanishes. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  a  dualism  of  two  series  of  events,  at 
once  in  closest  union  and  completest  separation,  is  so  unsta- 
ble that  it  dissolves  at  the  touch  of  epistemological  criti- 
cism. The  difficulty,  of  course,  arises  from  the  attempt  to 
■coordinate  or  place  in  exact  and  detailed  correspondence  two 
disparate  sets  of  facts,  one  to  be  construed  under  the  cate- 
gory of  mechanism,  the  other  under  that  of  teleology.    One 


3  2  THE  FREE-  WILL  PR  OBLEM  [162 

category  or  the  other  must  ultimately  control  both  series, 
and  the  outcome  will  be  a  belief  in  a  one-sided  dependence 
of  mind  upon  matter  (materialistic  parallelism),  or  of  mat- 
ter upon  mind  (idealistic  parallelism).  Historically  a 
mechanical  principle,  that  of  the  conservation  of  energy, 
has  been  given  the  preference  by  the  framers  of  the 
parallelist  hypothesis.  The  law  of  conservation  must  be  in- 
violate in  the  physical  sphere,  and  the  laws  of  the  conscious 
process  must  accommodate  themselves  to  the  requirements 
of  an  exact  concomitance.  On  this  rigid  construction,  par- 
allelism, for  the  purposes  of  our  discussion,  differs  little  from 
automatism.  The  mental  life,  looking  always  to  the  me- 
chanical series  for  the  cue  of  its  own  activity,  cannot  be  said 
to  have  any  real  spontaneity  or  real  activity  of  its  own.  Con- 
sciousness is  thus  practically  reduced  to  the  position  of 
"  epiphenomenon,"  and  if  materialism  be  disavowed,  we  have 
the  familiar  puzzle  of  a  phenomenal  world  known  by  its 
epiphenomenon  or  shadow. 

If  stress  be  laid  upon  the  mental  side,  and  consciousness  be 
endowed  with  a  real  power  of  control  over  its  own  processes, 
mechanical  explanation  of  the  physical  series  will  inevitably 
be  incomplete.  If  the  mental  life  is  not  tied  down  to  mechan- 
ical conditions,  its  spontaneity  will  inevitably  infuse  into  both 
parallels  an  influence  which  is  foreign  to  mechanical  law.  If 
the  stream  of  consciousness  goes  along  in  accordance  with 
laws  of  its  own,  then  the  physical  concomitants  take  their 
exact  form  in  virtue  of  their  necessary  correlation  rather  than 
because  of  purely  physical  conditions.  The  physical  world 
is  in  some  way  plastic  to  conscious  purpose,  and  provided 
that  the  mind  can  initiate  its  own  action,  the  volition  is  a 
significant  and  essential  condition  of  the  physical  change, 
for  without  it  the  precise  physical  movement  would  not 
have  taken  place.  Bound  to  the  wheel  of  mechanical  causa- 
tion  by  the  link  of  inevitable   concomitance,  consciousness 


163]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  33 

can  be  prevented  from  controlling  the  mechanism  only  by  be- 
ing itself  rendered  impotent.  If  it  has  no  freedom  of  expres- 
sion, it  has  no  freedom  of  initiation.  If  it  is  not  a  real  cause 
in  the  physical  world,  it  must  be  merely  an  effect  of  physical 
action.  We  conclude  that  to  attempt  to  safeguard  the  inter- 
ests of  the  conservation  of  energy  in  the  physical  world,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  preserve  for  consciousness  the  power  of 
controlling  its  own  action,  is  on  parallelist  principles  hope- 
less. If  we  exclude  miraculous  intervention,  which  is  as 
hostile  to  an  inviolable  mechanism  as  is  the  influence  of  hu- 
man purpose,  parallelism  is  confronted  with  the  alternatives: 
either  mind  is  not  wholly  dependent  upon  brain-movement, 
with  the  corollary  that  mind  does  influence  brain-movement ; 
or  if  it  has  no  influence  over  brain-movement,  it  has  no  con- 
trol over  its  own  states. 

Many  popular  expositions  of  parallelism  seek  to  do  justice 
to  the  claims  both  of  mechanism  and  of  mental  prerogative 
by  first  arranging  the  facts  in  two  coordinate  and  mutually 
exclusive  series,  and  then  reducing  the  parallelism  to  a  sem- 
blance by  showing  that  the  physical  series  has  only  a 
phenomenal  or  symbolic,  that  is  mental,  reality.  The  theory 
is  thus  thought  to  be  freed  from  its  fatalistic  tendencies. 
The  mind,  in  this  reconstruction,  is  released  from  the  tram- 
mels of  the  mechanism  with  which  it  had  been  coordinated, 
and  recovers  both  its  power  of  self-activity  and  its  power  of 
free  interaction  with  the  elements  of  real  being,  of  which  the 
physical  world  is  but  the  phenomenal  symbol. 

This  solution  is  attractive,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  fatalistic 
corollaries  are  thus  wholly  avoided.  The  mere  fact  that  the 
life  of  thought  and  volition  can  be  thus  exactly  correlated 
with  mechanical  action  will  favor  a  determinism  of  the  me- 
chanical sort  in  spite  of  the  idealistic  interpretation  of  the 
mechanism.  But  the  main  question  here  is  whether  the  char- 
acter of  mental  and  physical  action  is  such  that  this  exact  cor- 


34  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [164 

relation  is  possible.  If  two  courses  are  open  to  the  volitional 
process,  as  libertarianism  holds,  then  the  placing  of  the  pro- 
cess in  relation  of  exact  correspondence,  point  for  point,  with 
a  nervous  process  by  hypothesis  "  unideterministic"  is  im- 
possible. We  have  tried  to  show  that  if  mental  activity  is,  in 
the  strict  sense,  to  "groceed  pari  passu,  with  purely  mechani- 
cal movement,  not  only  freedom  in  the  libertarian  sense,  but 
any  real  spontaneity  or  power  of  mental  initiative  must  be 
denied.  If  pure  mechanism  is  the  law  of  either  series,  it 
must  control  the  entire  psychophysical  process. 

It  seems  also  a  fair  criticism  that  the  idealistic  reduction 
of  parallelism,  in  the  interests  of  mental  efficiency,  involves 
an  undue  shifting  of  nietaphysical  standpoints.  The  brain  is 
first  not  only  treated  as  an  entity,  but  credited  with  certain 
varieties  of  movement  which,  we  believe,  there  is  no  empiri- 
cal evidence  that  it  possesses,  and  some  evidence  that  it 
does  not  or  even  cannot  possess,  in  order  to  fit  it  to  parallel 
completely  every  process  and  every  detail  of  every  process 
of  the  conscious  life ;  and  then,  presto  !  it  is  reduced  to  a 
mere  possibility  of  perception,  with  only  a  hypothetical  or 
symbolical  existence.  If  the  parallelism  so  carefully  made  out 
and  so  elaborately  buttressed  on  both  sides  with  metaphys- 
ical assumption  is  finally  to  be  reduced  to  a  semblance,  would 
it  not  be  better  to  disclaim  dualism  at  the  outset,  and  confess 
that  the  whole  question  lapses? 

C.     Interactionism 

To  have  scientific  standing,  interactionism  must  show  (i) 
that  conscious  processes  may  be  construed  in  terms  of  en- 
ergy, and  so  correlated  with  physical  energy  as  to  be  in- 
cluded within  the  general  law  of  the  correlation  of  forces  ;  '  or 
(2)  that  interaction  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  principle  of 

'  So  Spencer  (^First  Principles,  pp.  225-226)  and  the  Energetiker  in  Germany. 
See  [libben,  "The  Theory  of  Energetics,  etc.,  Monisi,  vol  xii,  no.  3. 


165]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  35 

conservation';  or  (3)  that  this  principle  is  so  Hmited  as  to 
be  inappHcable  at  the  point  of  supposed  interaction.  Of 
these  forms  of  interaction  the  last  seems  most  easily  defen- 
sible. It  does  not  with  ( i )  assume  a  relation  of  equivalence 
between  incommensurable  phenomena,  nor  with  (2)  attempt 
the  apparently  hopeless  task  of  reducing  something  to  noth- 
ing. The  doctrine  of  conservation  was  intended  originally 
to  be  a  formula  to  express  the  correlation  or  equivalence  of 
physical  forces — for  example,  that  a  given  amount  of  work 
done  would  generate  an  exactly  equivalent  amount  of  heat,  and 
that  this  heat,  under  suitable  conditions,  could  be  changed 
back  again  into  an  exactly  equivalent  amount  of  mechanical 
energy.  That  the  amount  of  physical  energy  in  the  world 
remains  constant  is  an  empirical  generalization  from  these 
facts  ;  it  is  not  by  any  means  an  a  priori  truth,  nor  was  it  in- 
tended to  settle  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  mind  and 
matter.  In  fact,  it  has  left  the  problem  much  where  it  found 
it.  The  doctrine  of  energy  simply  brings  up  in  a  special  form 
the  fundamental  question  of  the  causal  relation  between  mind 
and  body.  Descartes'  difficulty  was  with  the  quantity  of 
motion.  He  thought  that  the  soul  could  not  generate  nor 
retard  motion,  but  simply  change  its  direction ;  and  it  is  in- 
structive to  remember  that  the  theories  of  interactionism, 
occasionalism,  one-substance-with-parallel- attributes,  and 
pre-established  harmony,  were  thrashed  over  in  philosophy 
before  the  energy-conservation  doctrine  was  formulated.  If 
one  holds  a  priori  that  mind  cannot  act  on  matter,  nor  mat- 
ter on  mind,  the  scientific  principle  in  question  will  not  prove 
that  to  himself  or  others,  although  it  will  enable  him,  it  must 
be  admitted,  to  express  his  belief  in  a  more  impressive  man- 
ner. It  is  the  notion  of  interaction  itself,  not  the  law  of  con- 
servation, which  makes  the  trouble.     The  fundamental  prob- 

^  For  proposed  methods  of  conciliation,  see  Couailhac,  La  Liberie  et  la  Con- 
servation  de  VEnergie.     Paris,  1 89  7. 


3  6  THE  FREE-  WILL  PR  OBLEM  [  1 66 

lem  for  the  interactionist  is,  How  can  mind  and  body  act  and 
react  on  each  other  ?  and  not,  How  can  such  interaction  be 
reconciled  with  the  conservation  of  energy  ? 

To  the  objection  that  we  cannot  conceive  how  conscious- 
ness can  push  or  pull  atoms,  we  may  reply  ad  kominem  that 
we  cannot  conceive  how  any  transeunt  action  takes  place. 
Still  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  case  in  point  presents 
peculiar  difficulties.  Quantitative  relations  exist  among  the 
correlated  physical  forces,  but  this  does  not  exclude  causalty 
from  regions  where  quantitative  relations  are  inapplicable. 
Causal  relations  may  exist  between  elements  of  the  mental 
process,  or  between  two  minds,  or  between  stimulus  and  sen- 
sation, where  no  quantitative  proportionality  can  with  exact- 
ness be  ascertained.  Again,  the  conviction  that  friction  was 
the  cause  of  heat  was  just  as  firm  before  the  numerical 
correlation  of  cause  and  effect  was  established,  as  after.' 

A  more  effective  reply  might  be  that  the  difificulty  of  ad- 
mitting interaction  is  less  than  the  difficulty  of  denying  it ;  in 
short,  that  parallelism  makes  more  difficulties  than  it 
removes.  This  is  the  point  to  which  our  remarks  have  been 
directed.  We  may  believe  that  body  acts  upon  soul,  and 
conversely,  that 

"  —  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take, 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make," 

even  though  we  cannot  picture  to  ourselves  the  mode  of 
reciprocal  action.  That  the  inconceivability  of  the  mode  does 
not  apply  to  the  fact  of  such  action,  is  shown  by  the  common 
opinion  of  mankind,  including  philosophers  in  their  un- 
guarded moments,  and  by  the  working  hypothesis,  for  exam- 
ple, of  physicists  and  experimental  psychologists,  when  inves- 
tigating the  relation  between  atmospheric  waves  and  sound. 

'  See  Sigwart :  Logic  (E.  T.),  vol.  ii,  p.  385. 


167]  THE  PSYCHOPHYSICAL  QUESTION  37 

The  causal  principle  is  essentially  synthetic.  It  is  used  to 
unify  the  facts  of  our  experience;  and  the  arbitrary  diremp- 
tion  of  the  two  parts  of  the  world  of  experience,  even  in 
the  name  of  the  causal  principle,  cannot  logically  be  justified, 
and  is  a  thought  in  which  the  mind  cannot  permanently 
rest.  The  relation  between  stimulus  and  pain,  or  between 
volition  and  movement  answers  Hume's  requirement  of  inva- 
riable antecedence,  and  the  causal  connection  may  be  estab- 
lished by  Mill's  canons  of  induction.  That  one  link  in  the 
chain,  the  brain-movement,  is  inaccessible  to  observation,  is 
not  enough  to  invalidate  the  causal  inference.  If  the  essence 
of  causation  be  regarded  as  real  agency  or  efficient  action, 
then  surely  in  our  experience  of  voluntary  movement,  we 
gain  the  clearest  knowledge  of  such  agency.  Our  very  con- 
ception of  physical  energy  seems  derivable  from  our  experi- 
ence of  acting  and  being  acted  upon,  and  if  causal  agency  or 
efficiency  be  here  denied,  it  should,  in  consistency,  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  world  altogether.  Interactionism,  it  maybe 
claimed,  does  not  make  void  the  law  of  causation  ;  it  rather 
establishes  the  law. 

We  may  continue  to  believe  as  before  that,  when  we  form 
plans  and  purposes,  and  then,  after  what  we  call  an  effort  of 
will,  find  them  realized  in  the  movements  of  our  bodies  and 
in  the  physical  world,  the  purpose  and  its  realization  are 
causally  related.  In  our  examination  of  psychophysical  theo- 
ries, we  have  found  no  sufficient  reasons  for  giving  up  the 
conviction  that  we  have  power  on  ourselves  and  on  the 
world.  For  the  interpretation  of  this  conviction  we  must 
look,  of  course,  to  psychology  proper,  to  ethics  and  meta- 
physics. 


AQ  ^I3¥-^ 


II 


FREE-WILL   AND   EVOLUTION^ 

Two  recent  books  of  somewhat  similar  title  illustrate  two 
different  views  which  may  be  taken  as  to  the  relation  of  evo- 
lution to  the  free-will  problem.  The  author  of  the  Riddle  of 
the  Universe,'^  declares  that  the  superstition  of  free-will,  to- 
gether with  belief  in  the  two  other  "  buttresses  of  mysticism," 
God  and  immortality,  has  been  shattered  by  the  doctrine  of 
evolution ;  while  the  author  of  Guesses  at  the  Riddle  of 
Existence, 'i  declares  that  "the  deduction,"  from  evolution  to 
the  negation  of  free-will,  "  supposing  it  logical,  would  be 
fatal  surely,  not  to  free-will,  but  to  evolution." 

The  general  process  of  evolution  as  a  process  of  change 
or  progress,  covering  both  natural  and  human  history,  may 
be  regarded,  according  to  the  standpoint  from  which  the 
process  is  viewed,  as  pointing  to  and  culminating  in  the  pro- 
duction of  a  free  moral  personality,  or  as  making  the  per- 
son a  purely  natural  product,  devoid  of  any  permanence  or 
other  prerogative  which  would  raise  him  above  nature. 
If  we  start  from  homogeneous  matter,  or  primordial  living 
germs,  and  emphasize  the  law  of  continuous  development, 
the  ascription  to  man  of  powers  which  raise  him  above  the 
course  of  nature  will  seem  to  be  excluded.  The  tendency  of 
our  thinking  will  obviously  be  towards  mechanical  deter- 
minism. 

'  A  fuller  examination  of  the  general  theory  of  evolution  has  been  attempted 
in  an  article  in  the  Princeton  Theological  Review,  ]\i\y,  1903. 

*  Haeckel.     See  p.  92. 

•"' Gold  win  Smith.     See  p.  210. 

38  [168 


igC)]  FREE-WILL  AND  EVOLUTION  39 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  lay  stress  on  the  law  of  progress, 
the  change  from  lower  to  higher  forms  of  life,  we  may  find 
in  the  evolutionary  process  much  that  favors  a  belief  in  free- 
dom. '  Evolution  involves,'  so  the  indeterminist  might 
argue,  '  a  continuous  change  from  simpler  to  more  complex 
forms,  from  lower  to  higher  potencies  of  life.  There  is  the 
change  in  time  from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  from  the 
unconscious  to  the  conscious,  from  the  non-moral  to  the 
moral.  In  each  case  the  lower  sphere  is  both  transcended 
by  the  higher  and  incorporated  in  it.  May  it  not  be  that 
the  realm  of  mechanical  necessity  is  transcended  by  the 
realm  of  freedom  ?  In  fact,  is  not  such  a  transcendence 
what  the  whole  course  of  development  tends  to  suggest  ? 

'The  plant  overcomes  the  mechanical  law  of  gravitation  as 
it  turns  toward  the  light.  The  amoeba  detaches  itself  from 
its  environment  and  has  a  certain  power  of  movement.  The 
spider  weaves  its  web,  the  ants  move  and  mold  inorganic  mat- 
ter in  building  their  nests.  Higher  animals,  as  the  beaver, 
make  more  striking  changes  in  their  environment.  Finally, 
man,  "  the  lord  of  creation,"  standing  at  the  summit  of  or- 
ganic evolution,  though  he  is  partly  subject  to  his  environ- 
ment, and  dependent  upon  it  forhfe,  yet  shows  an  incalculable 
power  to. change  it  and  mold  it  to  his  own  uses.  He  exter- 
minates the  larger  animals  who  dispute  his  possession  of  the 
earth,  or  tames  them  to  be  his  servants.  He  covers  conti- 
nents with  the  products  of  his  civilization,  and  changes  the 
face  of  the  earth.  He  wages  warfare,  more  or  less  suc- 
cessful, upon  the  tendencies  he  has  inherited  from  the  brute, 
and  struggles  to 

"  Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast, 
And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die." 

What  shall  we  call  the  process  thus  sketched  if  it  is  not  the 
evolution  of  freedom  ?' 


40  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [170 

It  is  quite  apparent  that  our  interpretation  of  evolution 
will  depend  upon  the  presuppositions  which  we  bring  to  that 
interpretation.  If  inclined  to  believe  that  the  mathematical- 
mechanical  view  of  the  world  is  the  most  fundamental,  we 
may  find  in  the  evolutionary  philosophy  a  powerful  ally. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  we  believe,  on  psychological  or  ethical 
grounds,  in  the  efficiency  of  mind  and  moral  freedom,  we 
may,  as  has  been  suggested,  find  much  in  the  evolutionary 
process  to  support  that  belief. 

Three  points  in  the  evolutionary  theory  are  of  interest  in 
relation  to  the  free-will  problem:  i.  the  origin  of  conscious- 
ness; 2.  the  importance  of  the  conscious  factor  in  organic 
development;  3.  the  place  of  the  genius  or  great  man  in 
social  progress. 

Of  these  points  the  first  two  are  concerned  with  the  ques- 
tion between  mechanical  determinism  and  the  personal  the- 
ories of  the  will,  rather  than  with  the  fine  points  of  the  dis- 
cussion between  psychological  determinism  and  indetermin- 
ism.  The  consideration  of  both  may  be  brief,  as  they  carry 
us  back  to  the  subject  of  our  last  chapter.  If  consciousness 
can  be  shown  to  have  been  derived  from  unconscious  matter, 
automatism  and  mechanical  determinism  will  be  the  natural 
inference,  and  evolution  will  furnish  the  necessarian  with  an 
effective  weapon.  On  the  other  hand,  if  consciousness  can 
be  shown  to  be  an  efficient  factor  in  organic  development,  to 
have  "  survival  value,"  interactionism  and  expressive  freedom 
at  least  will  be  favored. 

I.  The  attempt  to  derive  the  conscious  from  the  uncon- 
scious is  rather  discredited  in  the  thought  of  to-day.  Added 
to  the  obvious  logical  difficulty  is  the  objection  to  causal 
intercourse  between  the  two  spheres  noticed  in  the  last  chap- 
ter. If  we  believe,  with  Tyndal,  that  "  the  passage  from  the 
physics  of  the  brain  to  the  corresponding  facts  of  conscious- 
ness is  unthinkable,"  even  when  brain-process  and  conscious 


171]  FREE-WILL  AND  EVOLUTION  4 1 

process  are  both  given,  the  difficulty  of  conceiving  how  such  a 
transition  took  place  in  the  first  instance  is,  if  possible,  height- 
ened. It  is  one  thing  to  say  that  brain-change  can  influence 
conscious  processes — this  the  interactionist  must  admit;  but 
it  is  quite  another  thing  to  say  that  physical  movements 
can  in  the  first  instance  produce  or  generate  consciousness. 
The  problem  is  to  explain  how  any  motion  of  thoughtless 
atoms,  however  complicated,  can  produce  thought,  or  how 
any  "integration  of  matter  and  dissipation  of  motion"  can 
give  rise  to  consciousness.  Mind  is  an  intruder  in  a  world 
conceived  in  terms  of  matter,  motion  and  force ;  and  the  pro- 
duction of  the  conscious  from  the  unconscious,  of  mind  from 
matter,  when  these  terms  are  used  in  their  obvious  meaning, 
is  a  logical  generatio  cequivoca. 

There  are  several  possible  ways  out  of  this  difficulty.  The 
most  obvious  would  be  the  materialistic  solution,  that  con- 
ciousness  is  itself  a  mode  of  motion,  a  view  that  is  not  now  in 
popular  favor.  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  of  "  conscious  energy" 
and  its  correlation  with  physical  forces  tends  in  this  direc- 
tion, but  he,  of  course,  disavows  the  materialistic  name  and 
teaching.  In  recent  statements  of  the  evolution  theory,  there 
has  been  an  attempt  to  give  a  more  adequate  account  of  the 
development  of  mental  life.  To  say  that  evolution  is  true 
as  a  universal  law,  and  therefore  all  the  processes  of  mind* 
are  derived  ultimately  from  the  clash  of  atoms,  is  to  ignore 
the  fact,  as  Professor  Baldwin  remarks,  that  "  mental  facts 
are  an  important  province  for  the  establishment  of  general 
evolution."^  The  principle  of  continuity  in  development, 
moreover,  is  better  satisfied  by  the  assumption  of  conscious- 
ness in  the  lower  forms  of  life,  than  by  the  logical  feat  of 
deriving  it  from  the  unconscious. 

"The  problem  of  the  origin  of  consciousness,"  says  Mr. 

^  Senses  and  Intellect,  p.  105. 


42  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [172 

F.  W.  Headley,  "  puts  us  on  the  horns  of  a  dilemma.  Either 
consciousness  is  present  in  the  lowest  forms  of  life  or  else  it 
was  introduced  at  a  higher  stage  of  development.  The  latter 
alternative  is  abhorrent  to  the  very  principle  of  evolution. 
We  are  driven,  then,  to  believe  that  even  the  micro-organisms, 
whether  animal  or  vegetable,  have  some  consciousness,  how- 
ever dim."'  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  account  of  the  evo- 
lution of  mind  has  become  more  or  less  metaphysical.  Con- 
sciousness is  assumed  where  there  is  no  evidence  that  it  ex- 
isted, in  order  to  account  for  consciousness  when  it  actually 
appears.  The  logical  gap  is  filled  up  by  a  metaphysical 
assumption. 

The  appearance  of  mind  may  be  coincident  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  life,'  and  then  the  question  of  the  origin  of  mind 
is  merged  in  the  wider  question  of  the  origin  of  life ;  or  con- 
sciousness may  be  regarded  as  an  invariable  aspect  of  all 
matter;  or  as  the  reality — "  mind-stuff " — which  matter  sym- 
bolizes. Conceived  in  this  rudimentary  form,  the  word  con- 
sciousness is  somewhat  "eviscerated"  of  its  meaning,  and 
may,  in  fact,  approach  infinitely  near  (though  it  never  reaches) 
the  limiting  term  "  matter."  The  problem  then  becomes  to 
trace  the  evolution  from  primitive  "  mind-stuff"  to  developed 
human  consciousness,  and  is  the  same  as  that  which  meets 
us  in  all  attempts  to  account  for  the  higher  in  terms  of  the 
lower.  The  elements  with  which  we  started,  and  the  finished 
product  to  be  accounted  for  are  often  unconsciously  assimil- 
ated, certain  properties  of  the  latter  being  transferred  to  the 
former.  The  homogeneous,  although  simply  considered  it 
would  remain  homogeneous,  is  endowed  with  instability  to 
account  for  the  diversity  of  things,  and  we  have,  as  Dr.  Ward 
says,  "  the  philosophy  of  Heraclitus  deduced  from  the  prem- 

'  Problems  of  F volution,  p.  155. 

'  Romanes.  Baldwin.     See  the  latter's  Mental  Development,  pp.  208-214. 


173]  FREE-  WILL  AND  E  VOL  U  TION  4  3 

ises  of  Parmenides."  '  In  the  ancient  form  of  evolution  atoms 
were  allowed  a  "  swerviny;  "  movement,  in  order  to  account 
for  free-will,  and  in  a  modern  form  "  matter"  is  said  to  con- 
tain "  the  promise  and  potency  of  all  terrestrial  life,"  and  is 
endowed  with  attributes  of  intelligence  and  almost  of  creative 
power. 

To  examine  closely  the  various  theories  of  the  origin  and 
development  of  mind  would  carry  us  too  far.  It  may,  how- 
ever, be  confidently  urged  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  scien- 
tific form  of  the  evolution  theory  which  compels  us  to  limit 
the  attributes  of  any  order  of  being — say,  the  living  or  the 
conscious  or  the  moral — to  the  predicates  which  belong  to  a 
lower  order  of  being.  The  very  idea  of  a  progressive  devel- 
opment is  in  harmony  with  the  poetic  insight,  that 

"  Man  hath  all  that  nature  hath,  but  more." 

Evolution  is  sometimes  identified  with  a  certain  kind  of  mo- 
nistic philosophy  which  on  a  priori  principles  excludes  free- 
will, or  even  real  personality,  from  the  universe.  But  evolu- 
tion, as  most  evolutionists  will  agree,  is  more  than  a  mere 
continuous  change,  without  order  and  without  end.  The 
process  of  which  evolution  takes  account  is  a  rational  pro- 
cess and  involves  a  real  progress  in  the  scale  of  being.  Pro- 
gress, however,  is  an  essentially  teleological  conception.  It 
involves  intelligence  or  purpose  at  both  ends — an  intelli- 
gence by  which  the  progress  is  appreciated,  and  doubtless, 
also,  unless  the  progress  is  purely  subjective  and  illusory,  a 
cosmic  purpose  of  which  progressive  development  is  the  ex- 
pression. It  would  be  illogical  to  hold  to  a  progressive  ten- 
dency in  development,  and  at  the  same  time  to  deny  in  the 

>  op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  245.  Lotze  {Metaphysics^  §  227)  says:  "  It  is  impossible  to 
deduce  difference  from  a  single  homogeneous  principle,  unless  we  have  a  group 
of  minor  premises  to  show  why  the  one  principle  should  necessarily  develop  a  at 
one  point,  3  or  t  at  another," 


44  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [174 

name  of  evolution  the  power  to  form  purposes  and  realize 
them  in  the  world.  There  can  be  nothing  antithetic  between 
evolution  and  the  prerogatives  of  personality,  unless  evolu- 
tion be  regarded  as  not  only  a  non-moral  but  an  irrational 
process,  without  value  and  without  aim. 

2.  The  place  and  function  of  mind  in  evolution  is,  at  pres- 
ent, a  vexed  question  both  in  biology  and  psychology. 
There  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  question  as  to  the  exact  point 
in  the  process  at  which  consciousness  made  its  appearance; 
but,  passing  over  this,  the  question  remains  as  to  what  influ- 
ence, if  any,  it  has  exerted  upon  the  development  of  the 
organism.  Has  it  a  "survival  value"  ?  To  the  latter  ques- 
tion, plainly,  the  interactionist  will  say  "yes,"  and  the  au- 
tomatist  will  return  a  positive,  and  the  parallelist  a  qualified, 
"no." 

In  the  automatist  theory  all  states  of  consciousness, 
whether  sensations,  emotions  or  volitions,  are  alike  the  "  pro- 
ducts of  cerebral  activity."  When  we  experience  what  we 
call  a  volition,  the  movement  of  which  we  think  this  to  be 
the  cause,  has  already  been  started  by  the  appropriate  nerv- 
ous mechanism,  and  consciousness  is  powerless  either  to 
initiate  or  to  inhibit  organic  movement.  To  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  consciousness  the  automatist  can  have  but  one 
answer.  Consciousness  in  the  first  instance,  as  in  its  devel- 
oped stages,  is  the  direct  result  of  a  certain  arrangement  of 
molecules,  and  is  "  generated  "  by  them.  But  why  was  con- 
sciousness evolved?  The  most  obvious  answer  is — because 
it  was  useful  to  the  organism.  If  it  be  replied  that  it  was  a 
chance  variation,  then  the  question  becomes :  Why  was  that 
variation  perpetuated  by  natural  selection?  And  the  answer 
is  the  same  as  before.  If  not  useful  to  the  organism,  con- 
sciousness, given  its  chance  appearance,  would,  like  the  eyes 
of  the  fish  in  Mammoth  Cave,  have  been  atrophied  or  elimi- 
nated by  natural  selection,  rather  than  preserved  and  devel- 


175]  FREE-  WILL  AND  E  VOL UTION  ac 

oped.  That  consciousness  should  be  evolved  out  of  the 
organism,  say,  when  compHcated  reactions  become  necessary 
to  its  proper  adjustment  to  environment,  and  yet  have  no 
selective  function  ;  that  it  should  be  not  only  preserved  by 
natural  selection,  but  developed  into  instinct,  deliberation, 
far-seeing  choice  and  intelligent  purpose,  and  at  the  same 
time  remain  a  useless  appendage,  powerless  to  affect  either 
the  organism  or  the  environment,  is  more  than  we  can 
believe,  even  on  the  authority  of  so  good  a  biologist  as  Mr. 
Huxley, 

It  may  be  confidently  said  that  the  victory  on  this  point 
rests  with  the  interactionist  as  against  the  automatist,  and  so 
far  favors  the  influence  of  consciousness.  It  must  be  noticed, 
however,  that  parallelism  is  favored  by  an  influential  school 
of  biologists.  The  prior  question  is  of  course  as  to  the  rela- 
tion between  consciousness  and  movement  in  human  expe- 
rience, and  if  causal  influence  here  be  denied,  the  denial 
must  be  extended  to  the  entire  realm  of  organic  movement. 
Yet  it  must  be  noticed  that  biology  presents  some  peculiar 
diflficulties  to  the  parallelist.  Denying,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  consciousness  can  be  an  evolved  product  of  the  uncon- 
scious, he  is  obliged  to  push  back  the  origin  of  consciousness 
behind  the  point  where  there  is  empirical  evidence  that  it 
exists  ;  and  denying,  on  the  other  hand,  that  consciousness  is 
an  efificient  factor  in  organic  development,  he  is  obliged  to 
say  that  where  it  does  exist,  it  does  not  influence  survival. 
This  paradox  is  illustrated  in  an  interesting  article  by 
Professor  Titchener,  in  which  parallelism  is  defended 
from  a  biological  standpoint.'  Holding  that  we  have 
evidence  in  the  history  of  the  individual  of  conscious  move- 
ments becoming  unconscious  (as  in  learning  to  walk,  etc.), 
but  none  of  the  reverse  process,  Professor  Titchener  draws 

1 "  Were  the  Earliest  Organic  Movements  Conscious  or  Unconscious?"    Pop- 
ular Science  Monthly,  March,  1902. 


46  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [176 

the  general  inference  that  all  organic  movements  were  in  the 
first  place  attended  with  consciousness.  He  says:  "The 
fact,  then,  if  it  be  a  fact,  that  ants  and  bees  are  nowadays 
mere  reflex  machines  (as  is  held  by  many  biologists),  will 
mean  that  they  have  started  out,  so  to  say,  with  a  certain 
endowment  of  mind,  which  they  have  lost  in  the  process  of 
adaptation  to  their  special  environment;  and  the  similar  fact 
that  Paramecium  has  its  one  stereotyped  form  of  motor  reac- 
tion to  stimulus  will  mean  that  it,  too,  had  at  first  its  modi- 
cum of  mind,  which  it  has  lost  on  its  journey  through  the 
ages."  ' 

Surely  the  theory  that  a  primitive  consciousness  is  needed 
to  explain  organic  movements,  and  that  its  continued  use  is 
necessary  to  prevent  these  movements  from  becoming  "  ste- 
reotyped," is  a  strange  basis  for  the  parallelistic  conclusion 
that  consciousness  does  nothing  to  further  organic  progress. 
It  seems,  on  the  contrary,  to  favor  the  interactionist's  con- 
tention, as  Professor  Titchener  himself  formulates  it,  "  that 
the  function  which  is  psychophysical  helps  the  organism  on- 
wards, on  that  account,  more  than  the  function  which  is 
physical ;  that  consciousness,  just  because  it  is  mental  pro- 
cess, furthers  life  and  progress."  ' 

Into  the  discussions  as  to  the  original  causes  of  variation 
and  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters,  it  will  not  be 
profitable  for  us  to  enter.  We  may  remark  simply  that  the 
essence  of  the  Lamarckian  theory  is  that  consciousness  is 
the  cause  of  organic  variation.  "  The  production  of  a  new 
organ  in  an  animal  body  results  from  a  new  want  arising  and 
continuing  to  be  felt,  and  from  the  new  movement  which 
this  want  initiates  and  sustains."  3  On  the  other  hand,  the 
extreme  Darwinians,  who  do  not,  with  Darwin  himself,  recog- 

^  Loc.  cii.,  p.  465. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  459.    The  whole  article  should  be  read. 

^  Quoted  by  Ward,  op.  eit.,  vol.  i,  p.  273. 


I  7  7  J  FREE-  WILL  AND  E  VOL  UTION  47 

nize  such  conscious  factors  in  evolution  as  sexual  selection, 
deny  that  consciousness  has  a  survival  value.  To  the  Dar- 
winians of  this  type,  who  hold  that  all  variation  is  chance 
variation,  the  origin  of  the  highly  complex  instinct  of  animals 
becomes  a  problem.  On  this  point  Professor  H.  W,  Conn 
has  lately  said:  "  It  is  frankly  admitted  that  to  put  the  bur- 
den of  explaining  instincts  upon  natural  selection  alone, 
unaided  by  intelligence,  is  to  lay  upon  it  a  load  too  heavy  for 
it  to  carry.  This  is  admitted  even  by  those  who  feel  that 
they  cannot  use  the  inheritance  of  acquired  character  to  help 
them  out  of  the  difficulty."' 

The  present  state  of  biological  discussion  seems  not  unfa- 
vorable to  interactionism.  It  may  be  said  that  the  biological 
argument  has  had  serious  consequences  for  automatism ; 
that  at  present  Neo-Darwinians  tend  strongly  toward  paral- 
lelism, and  Lamarckians  toward  interactionism,  and  that  the 
tendency  of  intermediate  thinkers  (if  an  opinion  may  be 
ventured)  is  toward  larger  recognition  of  the  importance  of 
a  conscious  factor  in  evolution. 

In  general  (to  sum  up  the  two  points  already  noticed),  we 
find  that  an  evolutionary  philosophy  which  traces  all  forms 
and  potencies  of  life  to  forces  resident  within  the  primordial 
germ,  or  the  primeval  atoms,  is  favorable  to  a  necessarian 
theory,  which  finds  the  conditions  of  voluntary  activity  ex- 
haustively contained  in  previous  collocations  of  matter,  or 
at  least,  in  traits  and  tendencies  which  are  handed  down  by 
heredity.  On  the  other  hand,  in  recent  discussions  of  the 
evolution  problem,  three  points,  not  unfavorable  to  a  liberta- 
rian belief,  are  observable.  The  attempt  to  show  that  con- 
sciousness has  been  evolved  from  the  unconscious  is  now  gen- 
erally discredited  ;  the  efficiency  of  consciousness  as  a  factor 
in  organic  evolution  is  widely  recognized ;  and,  it  may  be 
added,  the  gap  between  animal  and  human  intelligence  has 

^  The  Method  of  Evolution,  p.  275. 


48  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [178 

been  widened  rather  than  filled  by  the  recent  studies  of  animal 
psychology.'  Biology  has  not  spoken  the  final  word  upon 
the  free-will  problem,  but,  as  might  have  been  expected,  has 
left  it  to  be  decided  on  the  evidence  of  psychological  in- 
vestigation and  moral  conviction.         ^ 

3.  In  the  application  of  evolutionary  principles  to  the  his- 
torical sphere,  the  question  of  the  place  and  influence  of  the 
world's  great  men  in  social  progress  becomes  important.  If 
the  powers  and  capacities  of  the  great  man  are  whally  de- 
rived from  heredity  and  environment,  he  becomes  a  purely 
social  product,  with  no  power  of  initiative  which  can  be 
regarded  as  his  unique  and  personal  possession.  If,  on  the 
contrary,  there  is  in  the  great  man,  as  Professor  Royce  argues 
that  there  is  in  every  individual,  an  element  peculiarly  his 
own,  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  general  laws,  then  the  great 
man  is  a  very  real  factor,  and  it  may  be  a  prime  factor  in 
social  progress.  The  separable  questions  of  the  relation  of 
the  great  man  to  his  ancestors  (heredity),  and  to  his  environ- 
ment, may  be  conveniently  merged  into  the  general  question 
of  his  relation  to  his  age. 

The  genius  can  of  course  work  only  with  the  material 
which  he  finds  ready  to  his  hand.  He  must  employ  the  lan- 
guage and  methods  of  thought  prevalent  at  his  day,  and  can 
advance  only  a  measurable  distance  beyond  his  contempora- 
ries, or  like  a  captain  too  far  in  front  of  his  company,  he  will 
lose  touch  with  his  comrades,  and  his  work  will  remain  with- 
out influence.  The  relation  of  the  great  man  to  his  environ- 
ment is  so  close  that  it  is  possible  at  each  step  for  the  evolu- 
tionist to  say  to  him:  "What  hast  thou  that  thou  didst  not 
receive?"  The  greatness  of  a  general  does  not  consist  in  his 
independence  of  his  army,  but  in  his  ability  to  use  and  direct 
his  army.    The  hero-worshiper  will  give  the  credit  of  victory 

1  See,  for  example,  E.  L.  Thorndike:  "The  Experimental  Method  of  Studying 
Animal  Intelligence."     International  Monthly,  Feb.,  1902. 


1 79  ]  FREE-  WILL  AND  E  VOL  UTION  40 

to  the  genius  and  valor  of  the  general ;  the  evolutional  histo- 
rian to  the  state  of  military  science,  to  favoring  circumstances 
and  to  the  collective  qualities  of  the  soldiery.  As  in  all  cases 
where  the  cause  is  complex,  one  element  in  it  or  another 
may  be  emphasized  as  the  really  important  factor;  and  it 
seems  to  be  a  question  of  taste  whether  we  emphasize  the 
individual  contribution  which  the  great  man  makes  to  pro- 
gress, or  reduce  it  to  a  minimum.  Mr.  Spiller,  for  example, 
sees  in  Shakespeare  a  product  of  his  time.  "  He  only  ac- 
cepted the  torch  which  was  handed  him."'  Again,  "  Shakes- 
peare's dramas,  like  his  sonnets,  are  so  largely  indebted  to 
his  environment  that,  by  comparison,  his  own  contribution, 
a  very  real  thing,  shrinks  into  utter  insignificance,  a  ripple  on 
a  mountainous  wave."''  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  takes  a  quite  dif- 
erent  view,  "  What  struggle  for  existence  will  explain  the 
advent  of  a  Beethoven?  What  pitiful  necessity  for  earning 
a  living  as  a  dramatist  will  educe  for  us  a  Shakespeare. "3 
On  one  theory  the  great  man  is  merely  an  evolved  product; 
on  the  other,  an  original  moving  force  in  social  evolution. 

It  may  be  shown  that  Shakespeare  used  the  vocabulary, 
the  poetical  forms,  the  methods  of  dramatic  construction, 
common  to  his  contemporaries,  "  It  is  superfluous  to  men- 
tion that  we  do  not  owe  the  drama  to  him.  Similarly,  the 
blank  verse  which  he  employed  he  found  ready-made,"  etc.* 
But  it  is  not  in  these  points  that  originality  is  claimed. 
These  are  merely  externalia — form,  not  spirit.  It  is  in  the 
use  which  he  made  of  the  popular  dramatic  form  that  his 
claim  to  originality  lies,  and  here  the  whole  race  of  literary 
critics,  Mr.  Spiller  complains,  unite  in  the  estimate  of  a  late 
authority,  Mr,  Lee:   "To   Shakespeare  the  intellect  of  the 

1  The  Mind  of  Man,  p.  387.  "  p,  393, 

*"The   Reconciliation   Between  Science  and  Y^\\\i"  Hibbert  Journal,  so\.\, 
no.  2. 

*  Op.  at.,  p.  388. 


^O  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [igo 

world,  speaking  in  diverse  accents,  applies  with  one  accord 
his  own  words :  '  How  noble  in  reason  !  how  infinite  in 
faculty !  etc'  "  '  To  the  literary  critics  the  work  of  Shake- 
speare rises  above  that  of  his  contemporaries  as  Mont  Blanc 
above  the  other  Alps;  to  Mr.  Spiller,  as  "a  ripple  on  a 
mountainous  wave."  The  question  is  plainly  one  to  be  de- 
cided by  the  canons  of  aesthetic  appreciation,  rather  than  by 
the  methods  of  exact  science.  That  Shakespeare  used  in 
his  work  the  forms  of  expression  and  the  dramatic  methods 
and  historical  material  which  were  the  common  property  of 
himself  and  his  contemporaries,  is  surely  no  sufficient  rea- 
son for  transferring  the  credit  for  his  work  from  himself  to 
the  account  of  his  contemporaries,  or  to  that  of  an  imper- 
sonal Zeitgeist. 

The  view  referred  to  accounts  for  Shakespeare's  work 
mainly  through  the  influence  of  social  environment.  An- 
other way  of  discounting  the  personal  factor  would  be  to  say 
that  both  the  poet's  endowments,  and  the  use  which  he  made 
of  them,  were  wholly  the  gifts  of  his  ancestry  ;  but  what  little 
is  known  of  the  Shakespeare  family  history  would  rob  the 
view,  in  this  case,  of  plausibility.  The  influence  of  heredity  is 
the  deterministic  argument  most  commonly  urged  in  the  name 
of  evolution.  Can  man,  through  the  exercise  of  the  will, 
overcome  or  modify  the  dispositions  with  which  he  was  born, 
or  is  every  thought  and  act  controlled  by  them  ?  This  is 
really  the  psychological  question  of  the  relation  of  volition 
to  previous  tendencies  and  habits,  and  is  best  discussed  in 
the  form.  When  conflicting  motives  arise,  is  man  able  to 
choose  either  one  of  them,  or  is  the  choice  inevitably  deter- 
mined in  advance  by  previous  tendencies  to  action  ?  In  de- 
fault of  psychological  analysis  the  question  can  only  be  deter- 
mined by  noting  similarities  and  differences  between  parents 
and  offspring.     That  children  "  take  after"  their  parents  and 

1  Op.  ciL,  p.  389. 


1 8  1  ]  FREE-  WILL  A^'D  E  VOL  U  TION  5  I 

grandparents  is  a  fact  of  common  observation,  but  the  ex- 
ceptions are  so  numerous  and  puzzling  that  no  sweeping 
deterministic  generalization  is  on  empirical  grounds  justi-' 
fied.  Technical  discussion  of  the  facts  of  heredity  throws 
doubt  also  upon  the  validity  of  a  deterministic  argument 
founded  upon  them.  If  acquired  characters  are  not  inher- 
ited, then  the  thoughts  and  actions  of  ancestors  do  not 
wholly  control  the  thoughts  and  actions  of  descendants. 
The  only  way  a  determinism  of  heredity  can  in  this  case  be 
made  out  is  to  hold  that  each  individual's  habits  of  thought 
and  action  are  absolutely  determined  by  the  "  continuity  of 
the  germ  plasm  " — a  doctrine  so  hopelessly  materialistic  that 
it  will  not  find  ready  acceptance.   "^ 

The  facts  of  social  evolution,  we  conclude,  do  not  support 
the  deterministic  creed,  unless  we  argue  in  the  familiar  circle, 
"It  did  happen  so,  therefore  it  must  have  happened  so." 
Sociologists  may  and,  in  fact,  sometimes  do  use  the  argu- 
ment that  social  phenomena  must  be  subject  to  law,  or  there 
can  be  no  science  of  society,  but  this  is  to  make  determinism 
a  postulate  of  sociology,  rather  than  an  inference  from  social 
phenomena. 


Ill 

THE    CONSCIOUSNESS    OF   FREEDOM 

Freedom  in  willing  may  be  denied,  as  we  have  seen,  on 
the  ground  that  volition  is  related  to  brain-movement,  either 
as  necessary  effect  (automatism),  or  as  inevitable  accompa- 
niment (materialistic  parallelism)  ;  or  because  the  voHtion 
of  the  individual  is  determined  by  the  volition  of  his  ances- 
tors. Added  to  these  forms  of  determinism,  which  may  be 
called  the  psychophysical  and  the  evolutional,  there  is  a  de- 
terminism based  on  purely  psychological  grounds.  The 
denial  of  free-will  may  be  reached  as  the  outcome  of  an  anal- 
ysis of  volition  itself,  or  of  the  relation  of  volition  to  other 
elements  of  mental  content,  or  by  a  failure  to  find  any  per- 
manent center  of  activity  or  self,  of  which  freedom  may  be 
predicated.  All  the  arguments  for  determinism  are  expres- 
sions, in  different  ways,  of  the  theoretical  demand  for  the 
universality  of  causation.  If  A  be  chosen  instead  of  B,  there 
must  be  some  reason  for  making  that  particular  choice,  and 
this  reason,  whether  it  be  found  in  a  state  of  the  brain,  or  in 
the  volitions  of  ancestors,  or  in  the  constraint  of  a  prevalent 
motive,  is  an  antecedent  condition  which  determines  the 
choice  as  certainly  as  any  physical  cause  determines  its 
effect.  All  the  arguments  for  determinism  are  but  different 
applications  of  the  causal  principle  to  volition. 

The  positive  arguments  for  indeterminism  are  practically 
reducible  to  two.  The  first  is  the  so-called  consciousness  of 
freedom,  "  the  immediate  afhrmation  of  consciousness  that 
in  the  moment  of  action  we  are  free."  The  second  belongs 
to  ethics,  and  is,  that  freedom  of  choice  is  a  necessary  pre- 
52  [182 


1  8  3  J  THE  CONSCIO  USNESS  OF  FREED  OM  53 

supposition  for  the  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  our  moral 
nature.  It  is  the  conviction,  in  Professor  James'  words,  "that 
what  ought  to  be  can  be,  and  that  bad  acts  cannot  be  fated, 
but  that  good  acts  must  be  possible  in  their  place." 

The  psychological  argument  for  free-will  is  the  so-called 
consciousness  of  freedom,  or  the  consciousness  of  a  selective 
and  directive  power  in  virtue  of  which  we  may,  within 
limits,  control  the  course  of  our  thinking  and  our  conduct. 
It  is  imperative  to  get  as  clear  an  idea  as  possible  as  to 
what  the  testimony  of  consciousness  really  is.  Does  the 
"consciousness  of  freedom"  mean  that  we  are  outside  of 
prison  walls,  and  out  of  the  clutches  of  the  law  (absence  of 
external  restraint)  ;  or  that  we  cause  our  own  actions  (spon- 
taneity, so-called)  ;  or  that  we  might  have  done  otherwise  in 
the  circumstances  ("  power  of  alternative  choice  ")  ;  or  that 
we  can  do  anything  we  please,  for  example,  jump  over  the 
moon?  It  will  be  generally  agreed  that  it  means  this  much 
at  least,  that  in  the  formation,  and  consequently  in  the  reali- 
zation, of  our  purposes,  we,  as  psychical  individuals  are  caus- 
ally efficient.  In  its  feeling  of  freedom  consciousness  does 
not  testify  that  the  individual  is  a  causa  sui  in  the  sense  of 
having  the  ground  of  his  existence  in  himself,  or  that 
thought  and  bodily  action  can  be  independent  of  the  laws  of 
thought  and  of  gravitation.  It  does  testify,  however,  that 
the  individual  is  really  an  actor  rather  than  a  passive  spec- 
tator in  the  game  of  life,  that  his  actions  are  determined 
by  him  and  not  for  him  by  something  outside  of  his  own 
personality.  We  may  at  least  safely  say  that  conscious- 
ness testifies  to  a  conative  freedom,  meaning  by  this  that  the 
sources  of  the  individual's  life  of  effort  and  striving  are  to  be 
found  within  the  circle  of  his  own  conscious  life. 

If  the  feeling  of  causative  power  is  an  illusion,  as  the  me- 
chanical determinist  must  hold,  it  remains  to  be  explained 
how  the  illusion  arises.     The  most  notable  attempt  in  this 


54  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [184 

direction  is  that  of  Professor  Miinsterberg's  Willenshandhmg . 
In  this  monograph  the  feeling  of  self-activity  accompany- 
ing acts  of  "external  will,"  terminating  upon  the  movements 
of  the  body,  and  of  "  internal  will,"  terminating  upon  the 
course  of  our  thoughts,  is  recognized,  indeed,  as  the  essen- 
tial thing  in  volition,  but  the  will  is  nevertheless  resolved 
into  a  complex  of  presentations  or  sensations.'  All  sponta- 
neity or  causal  efficiency  is  thus  eliminated.  The  will  is 
"  phenomenalized,"  that  is,  reduced  to  atoms  of  "  conscious 
phenomena;"  and  the  residuum  in  case  of  voluntary  move- 
ment is  a  memory-image  of  a  former  movement,  the  "  kin- 
aesthetic  idea,"  followed  by  the  sensations  of  the  movement 
actually  made.  We  come  to  believe  in  a  causal  connection 
between  the  anticipatory  idea  and  the  movement  simply  be- 
cause of  the  priority  of  the  idea  to  the  sensation  of  the 
movement.  The  memory  image  becomes  the  "  constant 
signal  of  the  movement."  "^ 

This  account  is  accepted  by  Professor  Loeb  in  his  recent 
treatise  on  "  The  Physiology  of  the  Brain!'  He  says:  "The 
will  is  only  a  function  of  the  mechanism  of  the  associative 
memory.  We  speak  of  conscious  volition  if  an  idea  of  the 
resulting  final  complex  of  sensations  is  present  before  the 
movements  causing  it  have  taken  place  or  have  ceased."  ^ 
When  a  given  brain-center  is  stimulated  there  is  a  double 
effect;  a  reflex  current  going  down  the  motor  nerve  and 
producing  the  movement,  and  an  innervation  of  the  memory- 
center  corresponding  to  the  idea  of  the  movement.  There 
is  thus  the  memory-image  of  the  movement,  and  later,  the 
muscular  sensation  of  the  movement  when  actually  made, 

'  "  The  will  is  only  a  complex  of  sensations."  It  is  a  name  for  a  group  of  sensa- 
tions {Empfindun^en)  only  distinguished  from  other  sensations  by  its  complex- 
ity and  constancy.      Willenshandlung,  p.  62. 

'P-  145- 
'p.  216. 


185]  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  FREEDOM  5^ 

but  no  causal  connection  between  the  kinsesthetic  idea  and 
the  motor  nerve  current.     Professor  Loeb  remarks : 

"  As  we  do  not  realize  this  any  more  than  we  realize  the 
inverted  character  of  the  retina-image,  we  consider  the 
memory  efifect  of  the  innervation  as  the  cause  of  the  muscu- 
lar efTect.  The  common  cause  of  both  efifects,  the  innervat- 
ing process,  escapes  our  immediate  observation  as  our  senses 
do  not  perceive  it.  The  will  of  the  metaphysician  is  then 
clearly  the  outcome  of  an  illusion  due  to  the  necessary  in- 
completeness of  self-observation."' 

The  union  of  an  automatic  theory  of  movement  with  a 
sensational  psychology  which  "  phenomenalizes  "  the  will  is 
not  uncommon,  and  is  in  fact  inevitable.  If  the  bodily 
mechanism  is  self-sufficing,  the  will  must  be  reduced  to 
impotence,  or  really  to  non-existence.  Professor  Munster- 
berg's  explanation  of  the  illusion  of  personal  agency  is  not 
easily  applicable  to  acts  of  "  internal  will,"  and  it  has  the 
fatal  objection  that  in  breaking  the  connection  between  pur- 
pose and  its  fulfillment  in  the  mental  sphere,  it  robs  the 
thinking  process  of  all  continuity.  Besides,  the  theory  is 
applicable  strictly  only  to  cases  of  single-motived  volition. 
Where  there  is  a  weighing  of  motives,  the  suspense  of  de- 
liberation, the  simple  formula  of  anticipatory  image  followed 
by  experienced  sensation,  does  not  explain  the  whole  pro- 
cess.^ As  is  well-known,  the  author  himself  recognizes  the 
inadequacy  of  his  theory  as  an  account  of  our  concrete 
experience.  "We  do  not  feel  ourselves  such  conglomerates 
of  psychophysical  elements,  and  the  men  whom  we  admire 
and  condemn,  love  and  hate,  are  for  us  not  identical  with 
those  combinations  of  psychical  atoms  which  pull  and  push 
one   another   after   psychological  laws.     We  do   not   mean, 

1  op.  cii.,  p.  216. 

■^  For  fuller  criticism  of  the  theory,  see  A.  Seth  :  A/an's  Place  in  the  Cosmos,  ch. 
iiij  J.  E.  Creighton:    The  Will  (Ithaca,  1898). 


c6  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [i86 

with  our  responsibility  and  with  our  freedom  in  the  moral 
world,  that   our   consciousness  is   the   passive   spectator   of 
psychological  processes  which  go   on    casually  determined  . 
by  laws,  satisfied  that  some  of  the  causes  are  inside  of  our 
skull,  and  not  outside."' 

The  inadequacy,  even  for  psychology,  of  an  account  of 
volition  which  reduces  it  to  a  complex  of  sensations  is 
pointed  out  in  a  recent  treatise.''  From  the  standpoint  of 
the  "idea  psychology,"  Miss  Calkins  finds  three  features 
in  ordinary  volition  over  and  above  a  mere  anticipation  of 
the  result  to  be  obtained.  There  is  (i)  an  idea  of  the 
future,  linked  with  the  antecedent  image  as  the  idea  of 
the  past  is  with  a  simple  memory-image;  (2)  a  feeling  of 
realness — what  we  will,  we  will  to  be  real,  and  (3)  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  linkage  of  the  particular  image  with  future 
reality.3  But  even  when  the  analysis  is  carried  thus  far,  the 
author  confesses,  it  "  must  strike  every  one  as  a  little  forced 
and  artificial."  "  Will  is  a  consciousness  of  my  active  con- 
nection with  other  selves  or  with  things,  an  imperious  rela- 
tion, a  domineering  mood,  a  sort  of  bullying  attitude."  '• 
Again,  in  the  account  given  of  deliberation,  it  is  said :  "  It 
must  be  added  that  the  accounts  of  deliberation,  formulated 
in  terms  of  the  psychology  of  ideas,  are  far  less  convincing, 
that  is,  less  adequate,  than  descriptions  of  deliberation  as  op- 
position of  distinct  tendencies  of  a  self.  Such  doctrines  of 
conflicting  ideas  often,  indeed,  win  their  credence,  because 
we  unconsciously  add  to  the  conception  of  alternating  ideas 
the  more  fundamental  one  of  warring  self-activities."  ^ 

In  any  account  which  may  be  given  either  of  the  "  will  to 

'  Psychology  and  Life,  p.  16, 

'  Introduction  to  Psychology,  by  Mary  Whiton  Calkins. 

»pp.  300-301, 

*P-307- 
'p.  319- 


187]  THE   CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  FREEDOM  ty 

know"  or  of  the  "will  to  act,"  the  sense  of  personal 
activity  and  agency  cannot,  we  believe,  be  eliminated  ex 
cept  at  the  expense  of  psychological  truth.  When  it  is 
explained  as  illusory  by  an  appeal  to  the  psychophysical 
mechanism,  thought  itself  is  inevitably  reduced  to  a  me- 
chanical process. 

The  real  psychological  question  concerns  not  the  causal 
connection  between  purpose  and  its  fulfillment,  but  the  con- 
nection of  volition  with  what  precedes  it  in  consciousness — 
in  short,  the  relation  of  volition  to  motives.  At  the  moment 
I  feel  that  I  can  remain  seated  or  rise  from  my  chair  as  I 
choose.  So  much  all  admit.  But  the  determinist  often 
limits  the  consciousness  of  freedom  to  a  consciousness  of 
power  to  act  out  the  choice  already  made.  I  can  read  this 
book  if  I  choose,  or  that  magazine  if  I  choose,  but  there  is 
no  freedom  of  choice  in  the  sense  of  a  power  of  alternative 
choice — only  a  freedom  of  action  in  accordance  with  the 
choice  which  is,  as  it  were,  a  given  element.  But  of  two 
equally  customary  and  appropriate  actions,  I  not  only  feel 
that  I  may  do  this  or  that,  if  I  happen  to  choose  the  one  or 
the  other,  but  I  feel,  as  I  deliberate,  that  I  can  throw  the 
weight  into  either  scale,  that  it  is  in  my  power  either  to 
choose  this  or  to  choose  the  other.  Back  of  this  choice,  as 
I  take  it,  consciousness  does  not  go.  It  may  possibly  be 
that  consciousness,  like  a  floating  iceberg  four-fifths  of  v/hich 
is  below  the  surface  of  the  ocean,  is  absolutely  determined  in 
its  choice  by  the  steady  set  of  subliminal  tendencies  rather 
than  by  the  shifting  winds  of  conscious  motive;  but  of  this, 
if  it  be  true,  our  conviction  of  freedom  at  the  moment  of 
decision  gives  us  no  sign. 

Most  determinists '  admit  the  consciousness  of  freedom  in 

'  But  not  all.  Professor  Thilly,  for  example,  complains  that  the  libertarian  "  is 
apt  to  throw  into  this  consciousness  of  freedom  his  entire  doctrine,  thereby  garb- 
ling the  facts  to  suit  his  theory."     {Introduction  to  Ethics,  p.  334.) 


5  8  THE  FREE-  WILL  PR  OB  L.EM  [188 

the  sense  here  indicated,  but  reject  the  testimony  as  illusory. 
The  effort  to  explain  how  the  illusion  has  arisen  furnishes  an 
interesting  chapter  in  the  history  of  thought.  We  feel  free, 
it  is  said,  because  we  are  ignorant  of  the  causes  by  which 
our  desires  are  determined,  or  ignorant  as  to  what  the  result 
of  our  deliberation  is  to  be.  A  wealth  of  illustrations  is  used 
to  show  how  necessity  is  compatible  with  the  feeling  of  lib- 
erty. Spinoza's  classic  illustration  is  of  the  stone  con- 
sciously endeavoring  to  persist  in  its  proper  motion. 
Bayle  speaks  of  a  weather-vane  desiring  to  turn  east  while 
the  wind  blows  from  the  west,  or  of  the  needle  pas- 
sionately aspiring  to  take  the  direction  of  north  to  which  it 
is  drawn  by  magnetic  attraction.'  Or  as  the  hypnotic 
subject  always  obeys  the  hypnotist's  orders,  so  all  men,, 
though  acting  under  the  illusion  of  freedom,  are  really  only 
obeying  inevitably  the  suggestions  of  the  great  hypnotist 
Nature. 

M.  Guyau,  in  an  acute  discussion,'  is  prodigal  in  explana- 
tions, giving  at  least  three.  The  first  is  the  illustration  of 
the  dog  in  leash,  whose  preference  happens  to  coincide  with 
the  will  of  its  master ;  secondly,  "  No  one  can  ever  foresee 
with  absolute  certainty  what  we  will  prefer  to-morrow"; 
and,  thirdly,  "  We  can  never  .  .  .  conceive  of  an  ac- 
tion as  impossible,  for  the  mere  conception  of  the  action 
makes  it  possible;  hence  we  are  necessarily  free  in  our  own 
eyes."  Again,  following  M.  Fouillee,  he  says  :  "  The  idea  of 
liberty  determines  us  to  act  as  if  we  were  free."  3 

None  of  these  explanations  wholly  satisfy.  We  are 
ignorant  of  the  causes  and  of  the  future  condition  of  a 
good  many  things  of  vhich  we  do  not  predicate  freedom. 

'  See  A.  Joyau :  "La  Liberie  Morale,  p.  39. 
'  Education  and  Heredity,  pp.  61-64. 
3  p.  87. 


189]  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  FREEDOM  59 

The  stone  would  no  longer  be  a  stone  nor  act  as  a  stone  if 
endowed  with  consciousness  and  desire,'  and  no  dog  in  leash 
ever  perfectly  obeyed  without  constraint  its  master's  wishes. 
Again,  the  consciousness  of  freedom  in  the  presence  of 
alternatives  is  different  from  the  conception  of  the  possi- 
bility of  different  actions.  It  is  the  conception  of  ability 
rather  than  of  mere  possibility,  which  goes  with  that  of 
freedom. 

M.  Fouillee,  seeing  that  the  consciousness  of  freedom  can- 
not be  wholly  irrelevant  to  subsequent  action,  makes  it  a 
dynamic  idea,  an  "  idie-forcey  The  idea  of  freedom  is  one 
of  the  complex  of  ideas  determining  our  volition.  But  in  the 
moment  of  deliberation,  the  idea  of  freedom  attaches  alike 
to  both  of  two  actions,  thought  of  as  alike  possible.  It  is 
not  then  in  itself  sufficient  to  determine  the  decision  between 
them.  It  is  true  that  belief  in  our  ability  to  perform  an  act 
makes  the  performance  of  it  easier  and  more  probable,  as 
Professor  James  has  urged  in  his  Will  to  Believe,  but  this 
confidence  in  our  ability  is  often  reached  as  the  result  of  voli- 
tion— of  voluntary  attention — before  it  becomes  a  factor  in  the 
final  decision.  As  M.  Fouillee  himself  says  ;  "  Given,  a  sys- 
tem of  forces  however  great,  the  idea  of  freedom  {liberte), 
always  present  in  myself,  enables  me  to  conceive  a  force 
still  greater ;  and  if  I  put  this  idea  to  the  test  I  can  succeed. 
...  I  can  always,  in  virtue  of  the  idea  of  freedom,  pass 
from  one  force  to  another  still  greater;  I  have  only  to  con- 
tinue this  movement  to  obtain  the  degree  of  force  necessary 
to  each  action."^  The  idea  of  liberty  can  apparently,  in  this 
exposition,  be  used  at  will  to  increase  our  power  of  acting, 
but  it  remains  doubtful  whether  the  use  we  make  of  it  is 
predetermined  or  not.     If  there  is  no  real  liberty  in  the  use 

'  Cf.  Ladd  :  Philosophy  of  Conduct,  pp.  154  f. 
'Za  Liberti  et  le  Determinisme,  pp.  241-242. 


60  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [jgo 

we  may  make  of  the  idea  of  liberty,  the  illusion  and  the 
failure  to  account  for  the  illusion  remain  as  before.' 

Over  against  the  consciousness  of  freedom  on  the  psycho- 
logical side  m.ay  be  placed  the  analysis  of  volition  into  a 
conflict  of  motives  with  a  resulting  prevalence  of  the  strongest 
motive.  The  points  of  this  well-worn  discussion  may  be 
briefly  indicated. 

When  Bassanio  chooses  the  leaden  casket  or  Shylock  the 
pound  of  flesh,  it  is  easy  to  say  that,  given  the  circumstances 
of  the  case  and  the  character  of  the  men,  the  idea  of  these 
objects  had  for  the  respective  choosers  a  certain  inherent 
power,  which  caused  them  to  be  chosen  to  the  exclusion  of 
competing  ideas.  Why  is  one  of  two  competing  motives 
chosen?  The  simple  answer  is,  that  it  was  the  strongest 
motive.  By  motive  we  must  here  mean  the  idea  of  an  object 
or  action  which  claims  the  attention  and  solicits  the  will,  and 
which,  in  the  absence  of  competing  ideas,  would  "  stably 
prevail"  in  thought  and  issue  in  appropriate  action.  To 
say  that  the  motive  which  prevailed  is  the  strongest  mo- 
tive, may  be  simple  tautology.  It  was  chosen  because  it 
was  chosen.  If  the  statement  means  more  than  this,  it  must 
mean  that  previous  to  the  decision  and  fiat  which  terminated 
the  conflict,  the  motive  which  prevailed  had,  as  related  to 
the  mind  of  the  chooser,  a  certain  inherent  efficiency  or 
power,  which  secured  for  it  inevitable  victory  over  other 
ideas,  seeming  to  dispute  with  it  the  possession  of  the  field. 

That  ideas  of  movement  have  a  certain  dynamic  character, 
a  certain  tendency,  in  the  absence  of  inhibiting  factors,  to 
get  themselves  expressed  in  movement,  there  can  be  no 
doubt;  but  this  is  far  from  saying  that  their  action  is 
mechanical,  like  the  impact  of  one  billiard  ball  upon  another, 
that  the  outcome  of  conflicting  motives  is  in  any  sense  com- 

'  Delboeuf  declares  that  "  the  illusion  of  freedom  is  as  inexplicable  as  the  fact 
of  freedom."     "  Determinisme  et  Liberie,"  Revue  Phil.,  xiii,  p.  463. 


I  ^  T  ]  THE  CON  SCI  O  US  NESS  OF  FREEDOM  g  j 

parable  to  the  "  resultant"  of  two  physical  forces  differing  in 
direction.  "  Physical  causation  presents  us  no  analogy  to 
the  selecting,  intensifying,  abbreviating  and  synthesizing 
activity  of  attention."' 

Analogy  drawn  from  vital  phenomena  may  be  used  to 
describe  the  selective  activity  of  attention  when  no  special 
eflfort  is  put  forth,  but  where  a  certain  idea,  for  instance  that 
of  a  disagreeable  duty,  can  be  attended  to  and  held  in  mind 
only  by  an  effort,  vital  analogies  are  as  inadequate  as  those 
drawn  from  physical  phenomena.  We  surely  feel  in  the  case 
suggested  that  the  amount  of  effort  in  attending  to  the  idea  can 
be  increased  or  diminished,  in  other  words  that  more  than 
one  possibility  of  thought  or  action  is  open  to  us.  The  testi- 
mony of  consciousness  in  such  cases  seems  unmistakable, 
that  we  not  only  put  forth  effort,  and  so  cause  our  own 
actions,  but  that  over  and  above  the  simple  reactive  con- 
sciousness there  is  a  power  of  attending  with  effort  through 
which  the  time  and  direction  of  the  reactions  may  be 
altered.  If  there  is  such  a  power  at  the  centre  of  personal- 
ity, it  plainly  transcends  the  spheres  of  mechanical  or  vital 
reaction,  and  so  is  not  statable  in  purely  mechanical  or 
biological  terms. 

"  The  question  of  fact,"  says  Professor  James,  "  in  the  free- 
will controversy  is  .  .  .  extremely  simple.  It  relates  solely  to 
the  amount  of  effort  of  attention  or  consent  which  we  can  at  any 
time  put  forth.  Are  the  duration  and  intensity  of  this  effort 
fixed  functions  of  the  object,  or  are  they  not  ?  ...  It  seems 
as  if  the  effort  were  an  independent  variable,  as  if  we  might 
exert  more  or  less  of  it  in  any  given  case."^ 

Granted  that  consciousness  testifies  to  the  power  of  choos- 
ing between  presented  motives,  its  testimony  cannot  be  finally 
accepted  until  we  answer  the  question.  Who  or  what  is  it 

'  Baldwin  :  Feelings  and  Will,  p.  371. 
"^Principles  of  Psychology ,  vol.  2,  p.  571. 


(52  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [192 

that  is  felt  to  be  free  ?  If  there  is  no  self  "  irresolvable  into 
motives,"  there  is  no  self  to  choose  between  motives.  "  If 
there  is  no  ego,  I  cannot,  of  course,  be  conscious  of  myself; 
and  if  I  cannot  be  conscious  of  myself,  I  cannot  be  con- 
scious of  myself  as  free." '  Underlying  the  question  of  free- 
dom is  the  question  whether  there  is  a  permanent  unitary 
center  of  thought,  feeling    and  volition, 

Kant  made  his  conviction  both  of  the  freedom  and  the 
reality  of  the  self,  except  as  a  bare  logical  subject,  a  postu- 
late of  the  moral  imperative,  "  I  ought."  There  is  no  doubt 
that  in  my  moral  relationships,  in  the  claims  which  I  make 
upon  others  and  in  the  duties  which  I  acknowledge  toward 
others,  I  have  an  intense  feeling  or  conviction  of  my  own 
personal  reality  and  separate  identity.  But  while  this  con- 
viction is,  perhaps,  at  a  maximum  in  moral  experience,  it  is 
not  necessary,  as  Dr.  Ward  suggests,  to  wait  for  the  moral  im- 
perative /  ought  to  disclose  the  practical  /  can!'  ^  Not  only 
in  moments  of  moral  emotion  but  in  moments  of  purposeful 
activity  we  have  an  unmistakable  certainty  of  ourselves  as 
the  real  actors.  The  self  is  felt  to  be  a  center  of  activity  or 
spontaneity,  standing  in  influential  relations  with  the  other 
constituents  of  reality.  Says  Mr.  A.  Seth :  "In  the  pur- 
posive '  I  will '  each  man  is  real,  and  is  immediately  con- 
scious of  his  own  reality.  Whatever  else  may  or  may  not 
be  real,  this  is  real.  This  is  the  fundamental  belief,  around 
which  skepticism  may  weave  its  maze  of  doubts  and  logical 
puzzles,  but  from  which  it  is  eventually  powerless  to  dislodge 
us,  because  no  argument  can  affect  an  immediate  certainty."  3 

In  the  very  processes  of  thought  we  have  also  a  vivid 
consciousness  of  the  thinking  subject  as  active  in  appropriat- 

'  Momerie :  Personality,  p.  86. 

*  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  ii,,  p.  190. 

*  Two  Lectures  on  Theism,  p.  46. 


193]  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  FREEDOM  g^ 

ing,  selecting,  rejecting,  its  object.  If  all  our  beliefs  were 
accepted  ready-made  there  would  obviously  be  no  test 
of  truth,  just  as  if  all  actions  were  of  the  reflex  order  there 
would  be  no  room  for  moral  distinctions.  Without  the 
power  in  the  intellectual  sphere  of  holding  the  judgment  in 
suspense,  of  doubting,  or  weighing  and  reflecting,  there  would 
be  no  science  nor  philosophy.  Not  only  would  man  be  the 
measure  of  all  things,  but  each  belief  would  be  the  measure 
of  itself.  There  would  be  no  distinction  between  truth  and 
error — no  body  of  knowledge 

"  won  from  the  void  and  formless  infinite." 

While  Ago  ergo  sum  is  a  useful  supplement  to  the  Cartesian 
argument,  yet  the  latter  retains  its  force  unless  the  mind  be 
regarded  as  a  passive  intellectual  spectator,  a  mere  pen- 
sioner on  outward  forms,  and  the  /  think  be  conceived  as  a 
mere  flow  ofidfeas  from  which  the  sense  of  personal  owner- 
ship and  agency  is  eliminated. 

But  can  the  immediate  conviction  of  self  which  we  have 
in  moments  of  activity  be  called  by  the  name  of  knowledge  ? 
Is  it  not  rather  a  sort  of  mystical  feeling  to  which  no  definite 
idea  corresponds,  and  which  does  not  attain  to  the  clearness 
and  definiteness  which  would  entitle  it  to  be  called  an  object 
of  knowledge  ?  For  our  purpose  here  it  is  indififerent 
whether  the  intimate  conviction  and  certainty  of  selfhood 
which  comes  to  us  especially  in  moments  of  purposeful  ac- 
tivity and  of  intense  emotion  be  called  knowledge,  or  belief, 
or  conviction,  or  feeling,  so  long  as  it  gives  certitude  of  the 
existence  of  a  permanent  and  identical  self.  Of  necessity 
the  knowledge,  if  we  may  use  the  word,  of  the  self  that 
knows  is  different  from  all  other  knowledge,  because  more 
immediate,  but  for  that  very  reason  more  certain.  As  soon 
as  we  begin  to  analyze  the  living  self,  its  life  has  vanished. 
We  look  for  the  self  in  some  pure  thought  or  conation,  or 


64  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [194 

emotion,  but  it  is  none  of  these,  because  it  unites  them  all 
and  is  the  presupposition  of  all. 

Mr.  Bradley  has  shown  us  the  difficulty  of  attaining  to  a 
definite  and  self-consistent  conception  of  the  self.  The  self, 
according  to  him,  is  "  a  mere  bundle  of  discrepancies." ' 
The  idea  of  activity  of  any  kind  is  **  riddled  with  contradic- 
tions," ^  and  the  self,  being  what  it  is,  is  not  able  to  bring 
order  out  of  chaos.  The  real  trouble  with  the  idea  of  the 
self  is  that  it  combines  diversity  and  unity,  and  "  we  cannot 
reach  any  defensible  thought,  any  intellectual  principle,  by 
which  it  is  possible  to  understand  how  diversity  can  be  com- 
prehended in  unity." 3  Yet  Mr.  Bradley  admits  that  "the 
self  is  no  doubt  the  highest  form  of  experience  we  have,  but, 
for  all  that,  is  not  a  true  form.  It  does  not  give  us  the  facts 
as  they  are  in  reality ;  and,  as  it  gives  them,  they  are  appear- 
ance, appearance  and  error."  ■» 

It  must  be  remarked  that  while  "  appearance,"  being  in 
Mr.  Bradley's  system  a  predicate  of  the  Absolute,  is  always 
an  appearance  ^y  something,  it  is  not  in  the  case  of  the  self  an 
appearance  to  anything.  Other  one-sided  appearances,  like 
goodness,  truth,  etc.,  may  be  appearances  to  a  self,  but  to 
whom  or  what  is  the  self  an  appearance — or  even  an  error? 
Another  self,  below  this  apparent  and  erroneous  self,  is,  of 
necessity,  assumed,  as  that  to  which  this  illusory  self  can 
appear,  and  it  seems  a  just  criticism  on  Mr.  Bradley's  posi- 
tion that  in  holding  "  the  highest  form  of  experience  we 
have"  to  be  "not  a  true  form,"  he  is  undermining  his  own 
work,  and  destroying  the  value  both  of  his  criticism  of  the 
world  of  appearance  and  his  construction  of  a  "  spiritual 
Absolute"  in  which  appearances  are  transcended. 

^  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  I20. 
«p.  115. 
'p.  119. 
*  Ibid. 


195]  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  FREEDOM  55 

Mr.  Spencer  has  recourse  also  to  the  riddles  of  Zcno  to 
discredit  knowledge  of  self,  and  then  adds:  "A  true  cogni- 
tion of  self  implies  a  state  in  which  knowing  and  known  are 
one  ...  So  that  the  personality  of  which  each  is  conscious, 
and  of  which  the  existence  is  to  each  a  fact  beyond  all  others 
the  most  certain,  is  yet  a  thing  which  cannot  truly  be  known 
at  all :  knowledge  of  it  is  forbidden  by  the  very  nature  of 
thought."  '  The  recognition  of  the  self  as  "  a  fact  beyond  all 
others  most  certain,"  might  more  properly  lead  to  an  expan- 
sion of  the  meaning  of  knowledge  so  as  to  include  this  fun- 
damental certainty,  rather  than  to  a  relegation  of  self  to  the 
limbo  of  the  unknowable  after  this  somewhat  empty  compli- 
ment has  been  paid.  It  is  a  stock  complaint  against  Mr. 
Spencer's  system  that  we  know  only  what  we  are  less  certain 
about,  while  what  we  are  most  certain  about  we  cannot 
know. 

It  may  be  useful  to  treat  the  mental  life  from  an  imper- 
sonal standpoint,  and  to  banish  the  soul  as  "  a  metaphysical 
surplussage,  for  which  psychology  has  no  use."  (Wundt.) 
The  self  is  then  found  nowhere,  though  really  present  every- 
where, because  we  have  tacitly  agreed  to  ignore  it.  But 
a  psychology  without  the  soul  must  at  best  be  a  mere  simu- 
lacrum of  real  experience,  alike  on  its  theoretical,  its  conative 
and  its  emotional  sides;  and  as  many  voices  now  unite  in 
protesting,  it  must  be  supplemented  by  a  philosophy,  if  not 
a  psychology,  written  from  the  standpoint  of  concrete  per- 
sonal experience. 

The  self  of  which  freedom  is  predicated  is  admittedly  the 
great  mystery.  Yet  it  may  be  known  as  the  ocean  is  known, 
while  we  have  never  sounded  its  depths.  It  is  never  pre- 
sented as  a  mere  object  among  the  other  objects  of  know- 

'  FirU  Principles,  pp.  65-66. 

*  See,  for  example.  Professor  Ormond's  presidential  address,  Phil.  Rev.,  vol.  xii, 
no.  2. 


^^  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [ig6 

ledge  ;  yet  in  our  thinking  and  purposing  and  striving,  in  our 
action  and  passion,  in  the  claims  which  we  make  upon  others, 
we  are  more  certain  of  its  existence  than  we  are  of  anything 
else.  It  can  be  repudiated  only  at  the  cost  of  discrediting 
all  our  knowledge.  It  may  be  so  mysterious  that  its  concep- 
tion seems  to  be  riddled  with  contradictions,  yet  its  banish- 
ment from  the  world  of  reality  involves  the  deeper  contradic- 
tion of  knowledge  without  a  knower.  Nor  is  the  self  a  purely 
logical  subject — the  I  think  oi  apperception  which  gives  unity 
to  knowledge.  The  /  will  of  purpose,  the  /  love^  I  suffer  of 
emotional  experience,  the  /  ought  of  the  ethical  demand, 
supply  it  with  content,  and  show  it  to  be  the  center  in  which 
thought,  volition  and  emotion  are  blended.  The  self  cannot 
be  snared  in  its  own  web.  Whether  we  deduce  it  from  an 
absolute  principle,  or  empirically  trace  its  descent  from 
lower  forms  of  conscious  life,  or  analytically  resolve  it  into 
a  bundle  of  sensations  and  ideas,  the  self  remains  the  logical 
prius  and  the  real  actor  in  all  its  theorizing  activities. 


IV 

FREEDOM    AS   ETHICAL    POSTULATE 

Hercules  at  the  forks  of  the  road  is  not  a  specially  im- 
pressive figure  unless,  in  the  choice  of  the  path  which  he 
shall  take,  there  are  moral  issues  involved.  If  turning  to 
the  right  means  following  the  line  of  least  resistance  and 
choosing  a  life  of  ignominious  ease  for  one  of  heroic  en- 
deavor, then  the  situation  becomes  interesting  and  the  de- 
cision momentous.  To  the  mind  in  which  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  solicitations  of  the  lower  life  and  the  call  of  the 
higher  life  takes  place,  two  roads  seem  to  be  alike  open, 
two  courses  of  action  to  be  alike  possible.  To  the  mind  of 
Hercules,  in  the  situation  supposed,  there  was,  we  may- 
imagine,  no  thought  or  suspicion  that  inherited  tendencies, 
previous  habits  of  choice,  or  outward  circumstances  had 
determined  in  advance  the  issue  of  the  struggle.  Defeat  and 
victory  were  to  him,  we  must  suppose,  d\\\^Q  present  possibili- 
ties, and  he  felt  himself  surely  to  be  more  than  an  interested 
spectator,  waiting,  perhaps,  with  breathless  eagerness  for  the 
issue  of  the  conflict.  He  felt,  we  may  say,  that  he  held  that 
issue  in  his  own  power — that  he  could  crown  himself  as  vic- 
tor, or  weakly  fall  in  his  own  defeat.  Here,  then,  is  the 
moral  argument  for  freedom  of  will.  It  is  the  belief  that 
two  possibilities  are  open,  and  that  it  is  in  one's  power  to 
make  either  one  or  the  other  actual,  which  makes  duty  im- 
perative, adds  point  and  meaning  to  the  sentiments  of  self- 
reproach  and  self-respect,  and  lends  interest  and  intensity  to 
the  moral  struggle.     It  is  the  same  belief,  as  a  postulate  in 

the  minds  of  others,  which  conditions  the  feelings  of  indig- 
197]  67 


58  THE  FREE-  WILL  PR OBLEM  [198 

nation  and  approbation,  and  the  public  expression  of  praise 
and  blame  in  civil  and  social  institutions.  If  the  free-will 
problem  were  concerned  merely  with  the  abstract  possibility 
of  alternate  modes  of  action,  without  being  so  intimately 
wrapped  up  with  our  moral  sentiments  and  convictions,  it 
might  have  furnished  an  attractive  field  for  the  exercise  of 
scholastic  subtlety,  but  would  never  have  been,  as  it  has 
been,  one  of  the  great  battle-grounds  of  thought. 

If  man  were  a  perfect  being,  never  knowing  the  stings  of 
remorse,  the  humiliation  of  moral  weakness,  nor  the  glow  of 
righteous  indignation  at  the  faults  of  his  fellow-men,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  life  might  be  reduced  to  a  sort  of  "  seraphic  insip- 
idity," but,  at  any  rate,  a  hypothetical  power  to  turn  aside 
from  the  path  of  right  would  be  regarded  as  a  possession  of 
doubtful  value.  "  I  protest,"  said  Mr.  Huxley  on  one  occa- 
sion, "  that  if  some  great  power  could  agree  to  make  me  always 
think  what  is  true  and  do  what  is  right,  on  condition  of  being 
turned  into  a  sort  of  clock  and  wound  up  every  morning  be- 
fore I  get  out  of  bed,  I  should  instantly  close  with  the  offer. 
The  only  freedom  I  care  about  is  the  freedom  to  do  right; 
the  freedom  to  do  wrong  I  am  ready  to  part  with  on  the 
cheapest  terms  to  any  one  who  will  take  it  of  me."  ^ 

In  our  present  estate,  as  we  know  too  well,  the  case  is  very 
different,  and  the  important  question  is  not  whether  we  can 
do  wrong — this  we  know  already ;  but  whether,  in  a  given 
case,  we  can  do  right.  The  determinist,  if  he  is  to  remain  a 
determinist  in  the  full  sense,  must  hold  that  where  inclination 
is  followed  rather  than  duty,  there  was  no  possibility,  under 
the  circumstances,  of  any  other  course.  In  fact,  inclination 
and  duty  as  motives  are  both  parts  of  the  psychic  mechanism, 
?.nd  both  their  presence  as  motives  in  the  mind  and  the  preva- 
lence of  one  over  the  other  are  the  inevitable  and  predeter- 
mined result  of  a  character  or  temperament  which  comes 

'  Collected  Essays,  vol.  i,  pp.  192,  f. 


199]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  59 

to  a  man  ready-made,  and  of  circumstances  over  which  he 
has  no  control.  "  The  action,"  says  Professor  T.  H.  Green, 
"is  as  necessarily  related  to  the  character  and  circum- 
stances as  any  event  to  the  sum  of  conditions." 

If  man's  preference  and  choice  and  even  his  thoughts,  the 
objects  which  he  attends  to,  the  ends  which  he  proposes  to 
to  himself,  and  the  intensity  of  his  effort  to  bring  those  ends 
to  pass,  are  the  inevitable  outcome  of  past  experiences  and 
endowments  and  present  environment,  as  "  necessary"  as  is 
the  fall  of  a  stone  when  unsupported  to  the  ground,  then, 
surely,  the  freedom  that  remains  is  very  limited.  Of  a  man 
whose  actions  are  not  only  influenced  but  determined  by  his 
past,  we  speak  as  having  lost  his  freedom.  He  becomes  the 
"slave  of  his  passions;"  in  the  judgment  of  charity,  the 
"victim  of  circumstances;"  in  any  case,  below  the  level  of 
the  normal  moral  individual. 

A  natural  history  of  volition  discribes  it  as  the  reaction  of 
the  empirical  self  upon  environment.  If,  with  a  given 
stimulus,  a  certain  result — just  this  result  and  no  other 
— inevitably  follows,  it  seems  to  be  a  matter  merely  of 
verbal  preference  whether  you  ascribe  the  result  to  the  ex- 
ternal (physical)  factor,  or  to  the  internal  (psychical)  factor. 
There  is  the  same  "  necessity"  about  the  result  whether  you 
choose  to  regard  the  physical  conditions  as  cause,  ignoring 
psychical  conditions,  or  whether  you  regard  the  psychical 
conditions  as  cause,  ignoring  the  physical  conditions.  The 
determinist  insists  that  he  feels  no  compulsion  or  restraint, 
no  necessity  in  acting  as  he  does.  He  simply  declares  that 
his  choice  was  not  made  at  haphazard,  but  was  the  result  of 
all  the  conditions.  No  more,  it  may  be  replied,  would  the 
stone  in  falling  to  the  ground,  or  the  tree  in  growing  toward 
the  light,  feel  any  compulsion  or  necessity  if  endowed  with 
with  consciousness,  yet  the  movements  of  stone  or  tree  if 
accompanied  by  consciousness  would  not  thereby  be 
brought  into  the  category  of  moral  action. 


70  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [2OO 

What,  then,  we  ask,  is  meant  exactly  by  the  spontaneity  or 
activity  of  self,  which  the  determinist  predicates  of  it  ?  It  must 
be  more  than  a  mere  capacity  of  movement  in  reference  to 
stimulus,  more  than  a  mere  "  activity  generally,"  for  "  a  mere 
activity  generally  must  act  equally  in  all  directions  ;  must  act 
equally  in  favor  of  or  against  any  movement  or  doing,  and 
neutralize  itself."^  It  must  be  a  capacity  for  acitvity  of  a 
certain  character,  which  ensures  that  a  definite  and  unique 
response  would  be  given  to  a  definite  stimulus,  and  that  suc- 
cessive responses  would  be  modified  by  those  previously  made. 
Each  response  is  then  in  a  sense  determined  by  those  which 
precede  it  and  determines  those  which  follow  it,  but  it  is  as 
certainly  the  result  of  the  nature  with  which  it  started  as 
the  turning  of  the  plant  toward  the  light.  How  can  moral 
character  or  responsibility  be  attributed  to  that  which  is  so 
exactly  describable  in  terms  commonly  believed  to  exclude 
morality  and  responsibility?  How  can  a  man  be  reponsible 
for  actions  which  are  absolutely  determined  by  the  diposition 
with  which  he  was  born  (through  no  will  of  his  own),  and 
the  physical  and  social  environment  in  which  he  is  immersed 
(through  no  will  of  his  own)  ?  It  may  be  replied  that  he  is 
endowed  with  a  power  of  self-activity.  But  a  power  of  activity 
in  itself  has  no  moral  character,  and  if  a  being  endowed  with 
it  has  no  alternative  as  to  the  time  in  which  it  shall  be  exer- 
cised, or  the  channel  in  which  it  shall  be  directed,  it  seems 
inappropriate  to  ascribe  to  such  a  being  moral  attributes. 
Character  becomes  synonymous  with  temperament.  It  may 
be  very  beautiful  or  very  repulsive,  and  call  forth  admiration 
or  disgust,  but  the  heat  of  moral  indignation  and  the  glow 
of  reverent  approval  are  alike  out  of  place.  If  the  whole 
truth  of  the  matter  is  that  man's  character  comes  to  him 
ready-made,  so  to  speak,  at  birth,  and  only  unfolds  inevitably 
according  to  certain  laws,  we   miss  from  human  life  the  very 

'  Hazard,  Freedom  of  the  Mind  in  Willing,  p.  248. 


201"]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  yi 

element  which  gives  meaning  to  moral  distinctions,  value  to 
the  moral  ideal  and  significance  to  the  moral  struggle,  and 
conditions  the  possibility  both  of  the  tragedies  and  triumphs 
of  the  moral  life. 

To  the  argument  that  free-will  is  a  necessary  postulate  of 
morality,  the  determinist  may  bluntly  reply,  as  he  has  done 
in  exceptional  cases,  "  So  much  the  worse  for  morality." 
The  more  usual  and  more  effective  reply  is  that  determinism 
is  not  only  (i)  consistent  with  morality,  but  is  (2)  essential 
to  morality.  In  the  former  part  of  this  reply,  as  we  have 
already  noticed,  the  determinist  pleads  that  we  are  not  under 
compulsion  or  restraint,  that  we  can  do  as  we  please,  that 
we  cause  our  own  actions,  and  therefore  can  properly  be  held 
responsible  for  them.  In  this  contention  that  his  theory  is 
consistent  with  responsibility,  the  determinist  is  on  the  de- 
fensive. He  may  simply  assert,  on  the  testimony  of  con- 
sciousness, that  we  feel  that  we  are  responsible,  thus  playing 
into  the  hands  of  the  indeterminist,  who  also  appeals  to  con- 
sciousness ;  or  he  may  seek  to  modify  the  meaning  of  respon- 
sibility so  as  to  make  it  compatible  with  his  theory ;  or  may 
turn  the  tables  upon  indeterminism  by  insisting  that  deter- 
minism is  essential  to  responsibility.  Sometimes  at  this 
point  an  antinomy  is  acknowledged.  "This  seems  to  be  an 
antinomy  of  the  practical  reason.  Responsibility,  an  unques- 
tionable fact  of  consciousness,  is  not  possible  on  the  suppo- 
sition that  the  will  is  free,  or  that  it  is  not  free." '  Professor 
Rhiel  acknowledges  that  to  treat  responsibility  together  with 
freedom  as  illusory — "  to  give  up  resposibility  in  view  of  the 
necessity  of  all  action"'  —  would  be  the  easiest  way  out  of 
the  dilemma.  Shrinking,  however,  from  this  conclusion,  he 
attempts  to  adapt  the  conception  of  responsibility  to  deter- 

1  Rhiel :   Science  and  Metaphysics,  p.  239.     The  chapter  quoted  illustrates  all 
the  forms  of  reply  noticed  above, 
^p.  240. 


72  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [202 

ministic  postulates  by  explaining  this  conception  as  a  social 
product.  •'  Responsibility,"  he  says,  "  is  a  phenomenon  of 
social  ethics,  and  as  such  it  is  to  be  explained  by  social  psy- 
chology." '  We  are  not  responsible  to  ourselves,  but  to  so- 
siety.  Responsibility  is  the  reacting  judgment  which  pro- 
ceeds from  the  community  in  which  we  live,  on  the  social 
results  of  our  action,  and  farther  on  its  motives.^ 

The  argument  for  the  social  origin  of  the  feeling  of  respon- 
sibility, admitting  its  validity,  seems  in  this  connection  beside 
the  point.  The  social  judgment,  of  which  the  individual 
self-judgment  is  the  reflex,  undoubtedly  imputes  demerit  to 
the  offender  and  merit  to  the  good  citizen.  If  it  is  correct 
in  this  imputation,  the  argument  for  freedom  as  the  impli- 
cate of  responsibility  still  holds ;  while  if  it  is  incorrect,  the 
social  judgment  which  imputes  merit  and  demerit  is  mis- 
taken, and  the  individual  reflex,  the  sense  of  personal  respon- 
sibility is  illusory — the  conclusion  our  author  sought  to  avoid. 
That  there  is  more,  however,  in  our  feeling  of  responsibility 
than  a  response  to  the  actual  judgments  of  society.  Professor 
Rhiel  himself  shows :  "  If  we  feel  ourselves  responsible  for 
the  disposition  that  remains  hidden  from  our  fellow-men,  we 
put  ourselves  in  thought  before  an  ideal  community  or  an 
ideal  person,  who,  we  imagine,  knows  our  motives  and  ap- 
proves or  condemns  them."  =  But  here  again  the  responsi- 
bility which  we  feel  to  an  ideal  self,  or  to  an  ideal  commu- 
nity or  person  either  implies  free-will,  or  our  feeling  of 
responsibility  for  our  inward  thoughts  is  illusory,  and 
these  lose  all  moral  character.  Over  against  the  thesis, 
"Moral  responsibility  demands  freedom,  in  order  that  an 
act  may  be    good  or  bad,"    may  be    placed  the  antithesis, 

1  p.  242. 

'  p.  244.     So  also,  in   substance,  Muffelman  :  Das  Problem  der  Willensfreiheit 
in  der  neuesten  deuichen  Philosophie,  Leipzig,  1902,  p.  2. 
» Ibid. 


203]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  73 

"Moral  responsibility  demands  necessity,  that  an  action 
may  justly  be  attributed  to  a  person";  but  the  thesis  can 
not  be  disproved  on  its  own  ground  merely  by  showing  the 
social  origin  of  responsibility. 

The  argument  is  often  transferred  from  the  subjective 
ground  of  the  felt  responsibility  for  personal  action  to  the 
objective  ground  of  criminal  jurisprudence.  How  can  the  law 
hold  the  criminal  responsible,  it  is  said,  unless  he  had  the 
power  not  to  have  committed  the  crime?  The  arguments 
here  are  mainly  a  repetition  of  those  already  reviewed.  If 
the  criminal  acts  are  in  all  cases  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
nervous  organization  with  which  the  criminals  were  born,  the 
so-called  criminals  are  unfortunate,  not  guilty.  They  have 
drawn  the  bad  numbers,  while  we — the  virtuous — have 
drawn  the  good  numbers.  Perhaps  it  is  the  social  organiza- 
tion which  irresistibly  leads  a  certain  individual  to  commit  a 
certain  crime.  Then  society  as  a  whole  becomes  the  real 
crim.inal,  and  it  is  a  foolish  weakness  to  be  indignant  at  the 
individual  wrong-doer.  Tout  comprendre  c' est  tout  pardoner, 
because  there  is  no  fault  to  pardon.  Punishment  cannot  be 
justified,  but  no  more  can  it  be  condemned,  for  as  a  reaction 
of  society  against  injury  it  is  as  inevitable  and  as  devoid  of 
moral  quality  as  the  original  crime.  "Sacred  rights  of  the 
individual  "  there  are  none,  because  the  individual,  without 
ability  to  act  otherwise  than  he  does  act,  has  no  responsibility 
to  society.  Collective  despotism  and  the  destruction  of 
political  liberty  would  be,  it  is  claimed,  the  logical  outcome 
of  a  deterministic  criminology.^ 

The  indeterminist  holds  that  there  can  be  no  moral  responsi- 
bility and  no  rational  ground  for  our  moral  sentiments,  unless 
there   is   at   some  time  in  normal  experience  a  real  capacity, 
independent  of  environment  and  inherited  tendencies,  of  sue-* 
cess  or  failure,  progress  or  regress,  in  the  moral  life.     If  a  per- 

*  ^f'    Joyau :  La  Liberie  Morale,  p.  65. 


74  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  ^ 2Q\ 

fectly  definite  stimulus  must  give  a  perfectly  definite  reaction, 
it  makes  but  little  difference  for  ethics  whether  the  reason 
assigned  be  the  nature  of  the  stimulus  or  the  "  spontaneity" 
of  the  subject.  In  either  case  there  is  no  possibility  of  acting 
differently,  nor  even  the  small  consolation  of  a  possibility  of 
not  acting  at  all.  The  necessity  of  heredity,  or  inherited 
character,  is  as  inexorable — no  more  so,  but  as  much  so — as 
the  necessity  attributed  to  physical  causation.  Should  the 
determinist  disclaim  the  doctrine  of  necessity  the  fatalistic 
inferences  disappear;  but  so,  if  the  disclaimer  is  genuine, 
does  the  historic  difference  between  himself  and  the  inde- 
terminist. 

Determinism  has  in  reserve,  however,  a  positive  ethical 
argument  of  its  own — that  determinism  is  essential  to 
morality.  If  an  act  is  to  be  moral,  and  one  to  which  moral 
responsibility  can  attach,  it  must,  it  is  claimed,  be  a  true  ex- 
pression of  the  character  of  the  agent.  Unless  a  given  act 
is  definitely  determined  by  previous  dispositions  and  habits, 
it  does  not  bear  the  stamp  of  the  agent's  personality,  and  he 
should  not  be  held  properly  responsible  for  it.  A  power  of 
alternative  choice,  the  contention  is,  is  really  a  power  of  un- 
regulated or  irrational  choice,  and  confusion  is  introduced 
not  only  into  the  physical  but  into  the  moral  order.  Once 
more,  if  certain  motives  presented  to  a  given  mind  have  no 
sure  and  definite  effect,  the  labor  of  the  educator  and  re- 
former is  useless,  and  reason  is  dethroned  in  favor  of  an  irra- 
tional chance  as  the  guide  of  life.  "  It  is  evident,"  says 
Comte,  "  that  improvement  by  education  supposes  the  exist- 
ence of  requisite  predispositions,  and  that  each  of  them  is 
subject  to  determinate  laws,  without  which  they  could  not 
be  systematically  influenced."  ' 

To  the  indeterminist's  charge  of  iatalism,  in  short,  the  de- 
terminist replies  with  the  counter-charge  of  fortuitism,  or  hap- 

'  Quoted  by  Hollander :  I\lenfal  Functions  of  the  Brain,  p.  359. 


205]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  75 

hazard  chance.  Thus  Professor  Fullerton  declares:  "  I  view 
with  horror  the  doctrine  that  the  teacher's  desk  and  the  pul- 
pit, the  force  of  public  opinion  and  the  sanction  of  law,  are 
of  no  avail,  I  am  unwilling  to  assume  without  evidence  that 
each  man's  breast  is  the  seat  of  uncaused  and  inexplicable 
explosions,  which  no  man  can  predict,  against  the  conse- 
quences of  which  no  man  can  make  provision,  and  which  set 
at  defiance  all  the  forces  which  make  for  civilization."  ' 

If  free-will  would  involve  these  absurdities,  if  it  would 
"  pull  down  the  cardinal  principles  of  ethics,  politics  and 
jurisprudence"  (Fiske),  if  it  would  "  pervert  the  entire  order 
of  nature  in  continually  increasing  extents  "  (Riehl),  and 
"set  at  defiance  all  the  forces  which  make  for  civilization" 
(Fullerton),  it  is  justly  anathematized  by  these  authors.  The 
conclusion  that  it  would  do  so  is  founded  on  two  assump- 
tions:  (i)  that,  on  the  admission  of  free-will,  previous 
habits  of  choice  would  make  no  difference  in  the  frequency 
and  intensity  with  which  a  certain  motive  would  appeal  to  a 
given  mind;  (2)  that  a  power  to  choose  between  alterna- 
tives means  motiveless  and  causeless  choice.  Let  us  exam- 
ine now  these  assumptions  in  order. 

(i)  Suppose  the  motives  which  could  appeal  to  a  certain 
individual  to  be  arranged  in  a  scale  of  ascending  moral 
worths  represented  by  the  letters  of  the  alphabet.  At  a 
given  moment,  let  us  further  suppose,  there  is  presented  to 
his  mind  the  choice  between  C  and  D,  with  the  possibility 
of  his  choosing  either.  If  he  chooses  C,  not  only  will  the 
probability  of  his  choosing  C  as  against  D  in  future  be 
strengthened,  but  there  will  be  a  tendency  for  D  to  drop  out 
as  a  really  influential  motive  altogether,  and  to  be  replaced 
by  B.  The  opposite  result  will  follow  if  D  be  chosen,  and 
the  next  pair  of  alternatives  will  be  D  and  E,  lower  in  the 
scale.     In  this  case  we  would  have  what  the  determinist  de- 

1"  Freedom  and  'Free-Will,'  "  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Dec,  1900. 


75  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [206 

mands,  a  close  relation  between  past  habits  of  choice  and 
present  influences  to  action.  Yet  the  present  volition  would 
not  be  hopelessly  and  irrevocably  bound  to  the  past,  and 
there  would  be  at  every  step  the  possibility  of  further  moral 
advance  or  retrogression.  The  illustration  is,  of  course,  very 
crude,  but  it  is  merely  intended  to  show  the  possibility  of 
admitting  freedom  in  a  real  sense  while  excluding  the  ab- 
surdities referred  to.  The  man  of  proved  integrity  is  not 
as  likely  to  steal  as  the  professional  burglar,  because  the 
idea  of  tapping  his  neighbor's  till  never  occurs  to  him,  or  if 
it  should  happen  to  cross  his  mind,  is  so  foreign  to  all  his 
habits  of  thought  that  it  is  instantly  banished.  We  recog- 
nize here  that  an  important  truth  underlies  the  determinist's 
polemic.  When  we  are  occupied  with  the  ordinary  routine, 
or  the  mind  is  relatively  passive,  the  dominant  motives  are 
doubtless  those  which  have  been  adopted  in  the  past,  and  it 
may  be  admitted  that  past  habits  of  thought  and  action 
will  determine  what  motives  will  really  solicit  to  action.  It 
is,  then,  the  prerogative  of  the  will  to  issue  the  fiat  or  the 
veto,  and  it  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  right  action  to 
choose,  it  may  be  with  intense  effort,  the  higher  motive  in- 
stead of  the  lower.  Moral  victory  is,  then,  worth  securing, 
not  only  for  its  own  sake,  but  because  it  makes  future  vic- 
tories more  easy,  and  defeat  becomes  proportionately  dis- 
astrous. 

The  goal  of  freedom  thus  becomes  such  a  cleansing  of  the 
springs  of  action,  by  continued  negation  of  the  lower  mo- 
tive and  suppression  of  the  lower  self,  that  the  unworthy  act 
shall  become  practically  impossible,  because  not  thought  of 
as  a  real  possibility.  The  birds  are  so  often  frightened  away 
that  they  no  longer  light  upon  the  head,  much  less  make 
their  nests  in  the  hair.  The  saint,  it  may  be  believed,  does 
not  feel  secure  in  the  possession  of  his  sainthood  till  tempta- 
tions to  evil  cease  to  allure  him ;    the  philanthropist  is  not 


207]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  yy 

sure  of  his  altruism  till  he  feels  a  healthy  scorn  for  "  mis- 
erable aims  that  end  with  self,"  We  see  thus  why  it  is  that 
we  often  pass  judgment  upon  what  we  are  rather  than  upon 
what  we  do.  "  We  reproach  ourselves  for  being  such  agents 
as  to  choose  the  good  so  feebly,  or  the  bad  so  readily." 
When  an  act  is  committed  which  brings  the  sting  of  self- 
reproach,  condemnation  extends  beyond  the  single  act  of 
choice  to  the  previous  choices  which  have  prepared  the  way 
for  it  and  made  it  possible.  But  the  judgment  upon  self — 
the  subject  of  the  volition — does  not  imply  that  at  every 
stage  we  were  determined  to  act  as  we  did;  rather  we  feel,^ 
certainly,  that  we  have  let  ourselves  drift  when  we  might 
have  prevented  it. 

Suppose,  now,  that  the  goal  of  morality  has  been  reached, 
and  that  unity  and  order  have  been  brought  into  the  moral 
universe  through  the  subjection  of  all  aims  and  desires  to  a 
supreme  ideal,  freely  chosen  and  persistently  followed.  Is 
freedom  thereby  abrogated?  We  should  rather  say  that  its 
goal — perfect  harmony  with  the  moral  law — has  been  at- 
tained, "  Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  thine."  But  if 
the  posse  7io7i  peccare  passes  over  into  the  non  posse  peccare, 
the  impossibility  of  sinning  will  be  different,  say,  from  the 
impossibility  of  the  hopeless  drunkard's  reform,  an  impossi- 
bility against  which  an  element  of  his  nature  vainly  protests 
and  revolts.  We  may,  if  we  please,  call  the  climax  of  freedom 
moral  necessity,  but  it  is  a  necessity  not  antedating  choice, 
but  one  which  is  freely  chosen.  A  self-imposed  necessity, 
the  necessity  of  the  moral  imperative  which  says,  "  Here  I 
stand  ;  I  cannot  do  otherwise,"  is  very  different  from  a  meta- 
physical necessity,  or  one  which  is  imposed  from  without. 
And  when  the  goal  of  freedom  is  reached,  moral  distinctions 
and  moral  values  will  not  disappear,  because  the  goal  has 
been  freely  chosen. 

We  have  tried  to  show  how,  on   the  hypothesis  of  free- 


78  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  \20% 

will,  the  choice  of  to-day  can  condition  the  range  and  inten- 
sity of  the  motives  presented  to-morrow,  and  so  provide  for 
moral  progress  and  stability  of  character.  Ethics  demands 
for  our  acts  of  will  not  only  liberty,  in  the  sense  of  absence  of 
necessity,  but  uniformity.  We  must  be  able  to  count  upon  what 
a  man  will  do,  to  judge  of  his  probable  future  actions  by  his 
past  actions.  This  is  what  Professor  Mackenzie  seems  to  de- 
mand when  he  says  that  we  need  in  the  moral  life  not  only  free- 
dom but  necessity,  for  necessity,  he  suggests,  maybe  defined 
as  uniformity.^  The  reign  of  law  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  essen- 
tial conditions  of  freedom  ;  without  it  freedom  would  be  of  no 
use.  A  deterministic  atmosphere  is  the  only  atmosphere  in 
which  freedom  can  breathe.  Without  a  necessary  connec- 
tion between  cause  and  effect,  between  means  and  end,  rea- 
son would  never  be  sure  that  her  commands  would  be  exe- 
cuted and  her  purposes  fulfilled.  Again,  each  act  of  will 
must  exert  a  certain  permanent  influence  upon  character,  in 
a  reflex  way,  if  what  we  call  a  stable  character  is  to  be 
achieved,  and  if  the  demands  of  the  lower  nature  are  to  be- 
come less  importunate  and  the  higher  voices  more  clear  and 
controlling.  It  is  essential,  we  may  say,  to  morality  and  to 
moral  accountability  that  the  fiat  of  will,  when  once  issued, 
should  leave  an  indelible  impress  not  only  upon  the  world 
of  phenomena  but  upon  the  self  that  issues  it.  Without  a 
determinism  of  things,  things  would  not  be  serviceable  to 
thought,  there  would  be  no  certain  channels  of  communica- 
tisn  between  mind  and  mind,  all  control  over  events  would 
be  lost  and  freedom  would  be  reduced  to  impotence.  With- 
out a  determinism  of  habit,  likewise,  persistence  in  a  chosen 
course  of  action  would  lack  its  reward  of  increased  facility 
and  skill,  and  the  moral  task  would  become  a  labor  of 
Sisyphus,  ever  to  be  begun  anew  and  never  rewarded  with 
real  progress : 

'  Manual  of  Ethics,  p.  93. 


209]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  70 

"  Nur  das  Gesetz  kann  uns  die  Freiheit  geben." 

What  place  then  remains  for  liberty,  if  the  causal  reign  is  so 
extended?  M.  Guyau,  in  his  Non-Religio7i  of  the  Future, 
speaks  of  the  supposition  that  mere  free-wills,  not  sub- 
stances, were  created,  and  remarks:  "  It  must  be  confessed 
that  these  free-wills  have  been  immersed  in  a  deterministic 
universe,  which  leaves  them  little  liberty  of  action.  .  .  . 
"  If  God  gave  us  liberty.  He  was  very  miserly  about  it. 
.  .  .  Why  does  our  free-will  exist  in  the  midst  of  conditions 
so  unfavorable  to  it,  so  calculated  to  render  it  ineffective?"' 
The  answer  will  be,  as  we  have  seen,  that  a  deterministic 
atmosphere  is  not  opposed  to  freedom,  but  is  essential  to  its 
exercise;  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  without  the  initial 
possibility  of  choosing  evil  as  well  as  good,  no  morality,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  would  for  the  human  race  ever  exist.  To 
provide  room  for  the  reality  and  the  development  of  the 
moral  life  two  postulates  are  needed — first,  freedom,  that  we 
may  be  able  to  choose  the  highest  ideal,  and,  second,  a 
certain  connection  which  we  may  call  conditioning,  and  in  a 
sense  causal,  between  the  choices  of  to  day  and  the  choices 
of  to-morrow,  that  we  may  be  able  to  make  continued  pro- 
gress toward  this  ideal. 

(2)  The  law  of  habit  as  applied  to  choices — that  a  choice 
once  made  is  likely  to  be  repeated — does  not  in  itself  fully 
satisfy  the  causal  principle  in  its  application  to  volition. 
The  causal  chain  is  broken,  the  determinist  insists,  if  in  any 
situation  the  possibility  of  two  alternative  responses  is  ad- 
mitted. Indeterminism  at  any  point  means  to  him  law- 
lessness and  chaos.  To-day,  it  may  be  said,  the  contro- 
versy is  somewhat  narrowed.  Psychological  analysis  has 
driven  motiveless  choice  from  the  field,  and  it  is  generally 
acknowledged  that  man  can   no  more  act  without  motive 

'pp.  437-438.     (E.T.) 


8o  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  \2\Q 

than  he  can  jump  out  of  his  own  skin.  The  real  question 
now  concerns  the  interpretation  of  the  fact  of  motived  choice. 
Where  two  lines  of  action  are  equally  attractive  and  seem  in 
deliberation  equally  to  solicit  the  will,  there  is  nothing  in  vo- 
litional experience  to  suggest  that  the  motive  actually 
adopted  was  so  related  to  previous  tendencies  and  habits 
that  its  choice  was  absolutely  predetermined  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  choice  of  the  competing  motive.  On  the  con- 
trary, in  deliberation  and  the  moment  of  action  conscious- 
ness testifies  to  power  of  selection  between  motives.  Nor 
can  appeal  be  successfully  made  to  the  ex  post  facto  judg- 
ment that  since  A,  as  motive,  was  chosen  instead  of  B,  there- 
fore A  was  the  "  strongest"  motive  and  necessarily  prevailed 
over  competitors.  For  in  this  case  A  is  nothing  apart  from 
its  being  consciously  attended  to,  and  deliberately  chosen, 
and  the  question  at  issue  is  as  to  the  nature  of  conscious 
attention  and  deliberate  choice.  The  only  chance  of  finding 
empirical  support  for  the  deterministic  assumption  is  by  an 
appeal  to  a  more  or  less  hypothetical  physiology  and  physics 
of  the  brain.  "  So  long  as  we  keep  to  the  purely  empirical 
ground  of  what,  before  and  during  the  action,  takes  place  in 
and  before  consciousness,  it  is  not  possible  to  demonstrate 
the  validity  of  the  causal  law  in  the  sphere  of  the  will  or  of 
the  mental  life  in  general."' 

To  prove  that  all  motivation  is  determination  the  deter- 
minist  must  take  the  "  high  priori  road."  Acts  of  choice, 
he  insists,  like  all  changes  in  the  universe,  are  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  the  sum  of  previous  conditions.  "  If  man  deter- 
mine himself,"  says  Hobbes,  "  the  question  still  remains, 
what  determined  him  to  determine  himself  in  that  particular 
manner,"  and  the  determinist  insists  that  adequate  knowledge 
of  the  man's  previous  character  would  in  all  cases  enable  us 
to  give  the  answer.     When  A  and  B,  as  motives,  solicit  the 

'  Hoffding  :    Outlines,  p.  344. 


2 1 1  ]  FREEDOM  AS  E THICAL  POSTULA  TE  g  j 

will,  and  A  is  chosen  instead  of  B,  what  was  the  motive,  it  is 
asked,  for  the  choice  of  motive  A?  If  you  could  assign 
some  motive,  say  a,  for  the  choice  of  motive  A,  the  same 
question  will  recur  in  regard  to  this,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum. 
The  indeterminist  at  every  stage  will  say  the  choice  is  free ; 
and  the  determinist  will  insist  that  it  is  determined  or  the 
cosmos  is  thrown  into  disorder, 

Kant  says  that  there  are  some  questions  which  should 
not  be  asked.  Possibly  the  question  of  Hobbes  quoted 
above  is  one  of  them."  Such  an  infinite  regress  as  the  ques- 
tion suggests  is  unknown  to  psychology.  The  act  of  atten- 
tion, Professor  Royce  insists,  is  both  cognitive  and  volitional. 
"Whenever  an  individual  acts,  his  deed  is  at  once,  and  insep- 
arably, an  act  of  knowledge  and  an  expression  of  purpose — 
an  insight  and  a  choice.  ...  To  attend  is  to  be  guided  in 
your  momentary  deed  by  what  you  know,  and  determined 
in  your  knowledge  by  what  you  do.  .  .  ,  An  act  of  atten- 
tion, I  repeat,  is  at  once  an  act  by  which  we  come  to  know 
a  truth,  and  an  act  by  which  we  are  led  to  an  outward 
deed."'  We  have  here,  it  seems,  a  sort  of  dead-lock  be- 
tween the  claims  of  the  cognitive  and  volitional  elements  in 
attention  which  no  analysis  of  the  fact  of  motivation  is  able 
to  break. 

In  its  application  of  causality  to  volition,  determinism 
takes  its  cue  from  the  causality  of  nature.  Causation  in  na- 
ture might  be  reduced  to  a  mere  succession — a  sort  of  Hera- 
clitean  flux — from  which  all  necessity  except  that  of  con- 
stant change  was  eliminated.  It  could  then  be  asked,  "  If 
all  things  change,  why  not  character  also?"=  Determinism 
in  this  case  could  admit  the  possibility  of  moral  reform  or 
degeneration,  but  apparently  only  at  the  expense  of  the  sta- 
bility and  reliability  of  character  upon  which  such  emphasis 
is  laid. 

^  77/1?  World  and  the  Individual,  Second  Series,  pp.  353-356. 
'See  Dunkmanu:  Das  Froblem  der  Freiheit,  Zurich,  1899,  p.  21, 


g  2  THE  FREE-  WILL  PR  OBLEM  [212 

If,  as  is  usually  held,  the  causal  principle  demands  that 
there  should  be  among  physical  phenomena  an  unbroken 
chain  of  cause  and  efifect,  it  is  no  demand  of  thought  that 
thought  itself  and  voluntary  attention  should  be  intermediate 
links  in  this  chain.  In  the  conscious  sphere  the  application 
of  the  causal  principle  is  dififerent.  It  here  demands  that  for 
every  act  of  the  conscious  self  there  be  a  real  actor,  rather 
than  that  the  actor  himself  should  be  necessitated  or  deter- 
mined to  act  as  he  does,  and  not  otherwise.  His  own  activity, 
rather  than  the  changes  among  phenomena,  will  be  to  him  the 
clearest  revelation  of  what  cause,  in  the  full  sense,  is.  To 
this  view  of  the  matter  Dr,  Martineau  has  given  classic  ex- 
pression ;  "  The  psychologist  insists  that  we  carry  the  idea 
of  causality  with  us  into  nature,  instead  of  taking  it  thence ; 
that  we  do  not  discover  it  in  the  phenomena,  but  insert  it 
behind  them ;  that  what  we  need  from  it  is,  to  apprehend 
why  they  are  so  and  not  otherwise,  and  have  the  definite 
order  into  which  they  have  set ;  and  that  apprehension  is 
supplied  in  a  determining  will  which  might  issue  other  things 
but  does  issue  these.  This  determining  power  alone  is  what 
he  understands  by  cause ;  and  whatever  necessity  there  is 
(other  than  logical)  is  but  the  product  of  its  freedom,  the 
self-imposed  method  of  its  own  action.  In  external  nature, 
therefore,  we  must  not  look  for  alternative  causation;  there, 
contingency  has  ceased ;  it  is  the  realm  of  immanent  vo- 
litions, already  in  the  executive  stage,  and  parted  from  the 
essence  and  act  of  causality.  From  that  field,  therefore,  the 
very  object  of  our  quest  is  absent  in  its  initiative;  it  is  vain 
to  seek  the  living  among  the  dead."' 

Free-will  in  its  moral  bearings,  or  the  capacity  to  choose 
between  good  and  evil,  doubtless  implies  an  element  of  pure 
willfulness  or  caprice.  An  initial  power  to  say  "  Evil,  be  thou 
my  good,"  is  correlative  to  the  power  to  choose  the  highest 

'  A  Study  of  Religion,  vol.  ii,  pp.  233,  234. 


213]  FREEDOM  AS  ETHICAL  POSTULATE  83 

ideal  and  bring  the  entire  life  under  the  control  of  reason. 
Without  the  former,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  the  latter  would 
lose  moral  significance,  for  a  forced  obedience  to  the  moral 
law  is  no  obedience  at  all.  Difficult,  as  it  doubtless  is,  to 
justify  the  postulate  of  freedom  to  the  theoretical  reason,  its 
value  for  the  practical  reason  is  so  great  that  ethics  cannot 
afTord  to  dispense  with  it. 


V 


FREE-WILL   AND   THEOLOGY 


In  the  theological  aspect  of  the  free-will  controversy  the 
question  takes  on  at  once  its  most  difificult  form,  and  the  one 
most  closely  connected  with  our  deepest  interests.  In  a 
world  governed  by  Supreme  Intelligence,  or  Infinite  Love, 
both  the  blind  necessity  of  fatalism  and  the  chaotic  indeter- 
minateness  of  pure  fortuitism  or  casualism  are  excluded ; 
but  in  the  sphere  of  personal  theories  of  the  will  the  argu- 
ments favoring  both  determinism  and  indeterminism  are 
raised  to  their  highest  power.  Without  venturing  very  far 
into  this  labyrinth,  we  shall  try  to  indicate  briefly  the  more 
prominent  points  of  the  discussion. 

If  we  are  to  escape  from  an  infinite  regress  of  finite  causes — 

"  Ex  infinite  ne  causam  causa  sequatur,"  (Lucr.  ii,  255) 

we  have  to  postulate  some  ultimate  Being  behind  the  finite 
process.  If  the  nature  of  this  Being  is  impersonal,  then 
necessity  underlies  freedom.  If  it  is  personal,  then  the 
question  as  to  the  primacy  of  the  intellect  or  will  inevitably 
arises.  If  in  creating  the  world  God  had  no  power  not 
to  create  it,  that  is,  if  the  act  of  creation  was  necessary,  then 
the  divine  choice  being  necessary,  we  must,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  relation  of  human  motive  and  volition,  ask  the 
ground  of  this  necessity,  and  a  new  regress  is  begun.  The- 
ology at  this  point  usually  adopts  the  Augustinian  view,  that 
the  creative  act  was  not  necessary,  and  that  divine  freedom 
is  the  ultimate  principle  of  things.  A  theological  corollary 
84  [214 


215]  FREE-WILL  AND   THEOLOGY  85 

from  this  doctrine  of  the  divine  freedom  is  that  man,  made 
in  the  image  of  God,  is  likewise  free.  He  must  share  in  the 
divine  freedom  if  he  is  to  be  in  a  true  sense  a  child  of  God, 
a  co-worker  with  Him,  and  a  partaker  of  the  divine  nature. 
If  the  belief  in  divine  and  human  freedom  are  thus  closely 
related  in  Christian  theology,  the  same  is  true  in  specu- 
lative theism.  The  clearest  revelation  we  have  of  the 
nature  of  God  (outside  of  the  Christian  revelation)  is  in  the 
nature  of  man.  If  there  is  no  free  spirit  in  man,  no  principle 
of  self-determining  activity,  distinguished  from  necessity,  no 
free  spirit  will  be  found  in  the  universe.  On  philosophical 
grounds  the  belief  in  God  and  freedom  must  stand  or  fall 
together. 

Historically,  however,  we  find  that  both  theism  and  dog- 
matic theology  have  raised  some  powerful  objections  to  a 
belief  in  human  free  agency.  The  theological  foes  of  free- 
will are  the  doctrine  of  sin,  including  the  correlative  doc- 
trine of  grace,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  foreknowledge. 
The  doctrine  of  sin  has,  it  is  true,  deepened  the  sense  of 
guilt  and  responsibility,  but  has  emphasized  the  "slavery  of 
the  will,"  and  admitted  freedom,  if  at  all,  only  in  the  sphere 
of  civil  and  secular  relations.  The  correlative  doctrine  of 
grace,  as  the  all-important  factor  in  moral  regeneration,  has 
tended  to  minimize  the  moral  significance  of  the  will ;  while 
the  doctrine  of  foreknowledge,  as  taught  by  an  Augustinian 
theology  and  a  speculative  theory  of  the  Absolute,  has  been 
urged  against  free-will  with  overwhelming  force. 

Much  of  the  discussion,  so  far  as  it  is  unfavorable  to  free- 
will, has  concerned  the  present  state  of  man,  assuming  him 
to  be  already  corrupted  and  morally  enslaved  by  sin,  and  it 
must  here  be  admitted  that  the  Augustinian  insight  into 
man's  moral  experience  is  deeper  than  the  Pelagian.  Many 
treatises  on  morals  are,  indeed,  justly  chargeable  with  super- 
ficiality— with  ignoring,  as  has  been  said,   "  a  whole  hemi- 


86  THE  FREE-  WILL  PROBLEM  [2  1 6 

sphere  of  moral  experience  " — when  they  pass  over  the  facts 
which  find  expression  in  Ovid's  "  Video  meliora,  etc.,"  or  St. 
Paul's  "  Who  shall  deliver  me  ?"  But  admitting  this  limitation 
upon  the  will  and  its  present  impotence,  unaided  by  divine 
grace,  to  attain  to  the  highest  spiritual  good,  the  central  ques- 
tion of  the  relation  of  sin  in  its  most  general  conception  to  the 
divine  agency  or  permission  or  foreknowlege  still  remains. 

That  God  cannot  be  the  author  of  sin  is  the  declaration  of 
theologians  of  all  schools.  How  then  did  sin  arise?  The 
argument  for  admitting  free-will  at  this  point  is  two-fold. 
The  more  strictly  it  is  held  that  moral  evil  in  the  race  is 
largely  or  mainly  referable  ultimately  to  the  sin  of  Adam, 
that  is,  the  more  the  responsibility  for  race  sin  is  shifted  back 
upon  the  first  sinful  choice,  the  greater  the  need  of  an  initial 
ability  in  order  to  ground  the  responsibility.  The  first  sin, 
secondly,  cannot  as  in  the  case  of  later  sinful  choices  be  ex- 
plained as  the  outcome  of  a  corrupt  nature,  for  man,  the- 
ology holds,  was  created  in  the  moral  image  of  God  with  an 
innocent  and  uncorrupted  nature. 

The  great  champions  of  theological  determinism,  Augus- 
tine and  Calvin,  have,  whether  consistently  or  not,  admitted 
free-will — that  is,  the  power  to  choose  between  good  and  evil 
— at  this  point.  ^^Primuni  liberum  arbitrum  posse  non 
peccare,  novissimum  non  posse  peccare!'  {De.  Ctv.Dei,XXll. 
37).  "Adam  might  have  stood  if  he  chose,  since  it  was 
only  by  his  own  will  that  he  fell.  .  .  .  Still  he  had  a  free 
choice  of  good  and  evil,"  etc.  (Calvin:  Institutes,  I.  xv. 
8;   cf.  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith,  IX.  2.) 

But  how  is  this  initial  act  of  free  choice  related  to  the 
divine  foreknowledge  and  decree?  Here  is  the  crux  of  the 
whole  question  as  to  the  relation  between  divine  foreknowl- 
edge and  human  sin.  If  predestination  means  efficient 
causation,  and  if  it  applies  in  the  same  sense  to  both  good 
and   bad   actions,  the  result  is  an  unethical  monism  where 


217]  FREE-WILL  AAD  THEOLOGY  87 

moral  qualifications  are  meaningless.  We  may  hold  an  easy- 
going optimism  in  which  the  sense  of  guilt  is  regarded  as 
illusory,  and,  according  to  a  well-known  formula,  "  God  is 
good;  God  is  all."  In  strictness,  though,  all  acts  are  re- 
duced to  moral  indifference,  for  nothing  really  remains  which 
can  be  called  the  act  of  a  finite  personal  agent.  Moral  and 
physical  evil  are  reduced  to  the  same  category : 

"  If  plagues  or  earthquakes  break  not  heaven's  design, 
Why,  then,  a  Borghia  or  a  Cataline  ?  " 

Even  to  Professor  Royce's  notable  attempt'  to  harmonize 
the  human  will  and  the  divine  will,  serious  objection  may  be 
taken  from  the  moral  standpoint.  In  his  earlier  exposition 
he  says:  "The  many  forms  of  will  form  one,"  and  "the  one 
will  stands  dififerentiated  into  the  many."^  "As  to  the  rela- 
tion of  this  individual,  as  thus  defined  [as  having  a  life-plan, 
or  aiming  toward  an  ideal],  to  God,  I  shall  be  equally  ex- 
plicit. I  assert  (i)  that  the  individual  experience  is  identi- 
cally a  part  of  God's  experience,  i.  e.,  not  similar  to  a  por- 
tion of  God's  experience,  but  identically  the  same  as  such 
portion;  and  (2 J  that  the  individual's  plan  is  identically  the 
same  as  God's  attentively  selected  and  universal  plan."  3 

This  conception  of  the  Absolute  as  the  principle  (or  Person) 
in  which  the  life-plans  of  finite  individuals  are  included  and 
unified  can  hardly  be,  in  spite  of  the  author's  assertion  that 
it  undertakes  to  be,-»  the  conception  of  an  ethical  theism. 
The  life-plans  of  bad  as  well  as  good  men  are  equally  in- 
cluded in  the  unity  of  the  Absolute.  "A  relatively,  although 
never  a  wholly  diabolical  or  damnable  individual  life  ideal  is 
perfectly  possible;    and  the  relative  unity  of  an  individual 

*  In  the  Conception  of  God,  and  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Series  I  and  II. 
^  Conception  of  God,  p.  74. 
^  p.  292. 
<p.50. 


38  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  \2\Z 

self  can  be,  and  often  is,  defined  with  reference  to  just  such 
a  relatively  bad  or  devilish  ideal." '  When  we  read,  a  few 
pages  later,  that  the  individual  plan  "  is  identically  a  part  of 
God's  plan,  so  that  the  attention  that  thus  selectively  de- 
termines my  ideal  is  not  similar  to,  but  actually  identical 
with,  the  fragment  of  the  Divine  will,  as  defined  earlier  in 
this  paper,  i.  e.,  with  an  element  of  the  Divine  attention," ' 
we  feel  like  insisting  that  such  a  relation  of  the  One  to  the 
many  is  an  unethical  one,  and  that  the  complete  identifica- 
tion of  the  Absolute  with  the  Holy  One  of  religion  is  impos- 
sible. Either  the  relatively  diabolical  life-plan,  whether  due 
to  forgetfulness  of  the  good,  or  the  failure  or  refusal  to  attend 
to  the  good,  is  not  really  diabolical  or  sinful  at  all ;  or  else, 
when  the  good  and  the  bad  plans  are  alike  merged  in  the 
Absolute  plan  as  parts  of  it,  ethical  distinctions  are  trans- 
cended in  the  sense  of  being  annulled. 

The  moral  consciousness,  warned  by  the  extreme  inter- 
pretation which  can  be  placed  upon  foreknowledge,  may  say 
"  In  the  name  of  human  morality,  let  us  limit  the  foreknowl- 
edge of  God."  3  This  is  the  position  of  Professor  James  and 
Dr.  Martineau.  Foreknowledge,  the  latter  admits,  is  an 
attribute  proper  to  Deity;  but  the  creation  of  moral  beings 
implies  a  self-limitation  of  the  divine  foreknowledge.-*  That 
the  solution  is  not  wholly  satisfactory  is  shown  by  Professor 
James'  attempt  to  carry  it  out  by  the  use  of  the  chess-board 
illustration.5  The  divine  Player  cannot  foresee  the  particular 
move  which  the  novice,  the  human  agent,  is  to  make,  but  as 
He  knows  all  possible  moves  and  the  reply  to  be  made  to 

1  pp.  288  / 

*  p.  293. 

'See  Picard,  Christianity  or  Agnosticism,  "p,  162. 

*  Study  of  Religion,  vol.  ii,  pp.  262-263. 

*  Will  to  Believe,  pp.  181  f.    The  illustration  was  used  in  a  somewhat  different 
connection  by  Hazard:  Freedom  of  the  Mind  in  Willing,  Bk.  I,  ch.  xii. 


219]  FREE-WILL  AND  THEOLOGY  gg 

each,  the  issue  of  the  game  is  certain.  We  admire  here  the 
boldness  with  which  chance  or  contingency  is  brought  into 
the  universe,  but  we  notice  that  even  Professor  James,  to  use 
his  own  figure  (p.  i8o),  is  careful  to  tie  a  string  to  the  bird 
lest  it  fly  out  of  his  sight.  To  the  divine  Contestant  the 
outcome  of  the  game  is  certain  and  predetermined,  although 
the  several  moves  are  contingent  upon  an  unforseen  human 
choice. 

Two  remarks  may  here  be  ventured.  The  arguments  for 
throwing  back  upon  the  Creator  the  responsibility  for  human 
sin  are  equally  strong  whether  or  not  sin  was  foreseen,  as 
possible  or  as  certain.  The  creation  of  a  world  where  pres- 
ent evils  physical  and  moral  (or  worse  evils)  were  only  fore- 
seen as  possible,  or  again  the  creation  of  a  world  of  sentient 
beings  where  nothing  was  known  as  to  what  they  would  do  or 
suffer,  is  surely  as  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  divine  per- 
fections, as  a  world  whose  actual  evils  were  perfectly  foreseen. 
If  evil  is  to  be,  mere  foreknowledge  of  it  (excluding  now 
authorship  of  evil)  does  not  detract  from  the  moral  attributes 
of  God.  The  existence  of  evil  and  its  providential  permission, 
not  its  foreknowledge,  is  the  real  point  of  difficulty.  Sec- 
ondly, such  providential  control  as  Professor  James  postu- 
lates may  be  conceived  as  so  extensive  as  to  be  as  hard  to 
reconcile  with  human  responsibility  as  is  complete  foreknowl- 
edge. Human  thoughts  and  desires  may  in  their  very  incep- 
tion be  the  moves  on  the  chess-board  whose  possibility  the 
divine  Player  foresees  and  is  ready  to  meet.  In  fact,  if  they 
are  not,  the  very  issue  of  the  game  as  well  as  the  successive 
moves  may  be  left  in  doubt,  and  evil  instead  of  good  may 
triumph  in  the  universe.  The  "  first  springs  of  thought  and 
will"  may  be  then  so  under'divine  control  that  the  "fountain 
of  contingency  "  may  be  practically  closed,  and  the  region 
given  over  to  chance  and  uncertainty,  may  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum.     Certainly,  the  relation  of  the  divine  Spirit  to  the 


QO  THE  FREE-WILL  PROBLEM  [2 20 

human  spirit,  can  be  no  merely  external  one,  and  we  may 
argue  ad hominem  that  if  such  a  providential  control  of  human 
volition  as  shall  certainly  secure  the  fulfillment  of  the  divine 
plan  is  not  inconsistent  with  freedom,  no  more  is  a  fore- 
knowledge of  the  steps  which  lead  to  that  fulfillment.  The 
sovereignty  of  God  in  His  providence  is  as  difficult  to  recon- 
cile with  free-will  as  His  sovereignty  in  predestination. 

A  thoroughly  moral  view  of  the  world  will  hold  both  to 
the  validity  of  moral  distinctions — the  ultimate  difiference 
between  right  and  wrong — and  to  the  final  triumph  of  the 
right.  Fatalism  or  hyper-Augustinian  predestination  leaves 
no  room  for  the  former;  but  a  cosmological  doctrine  of 
chance  or  of  unlimited  freedom  leaves  open  the  possibility 
of  a  final  moral  anarchy,  in  place  of  a  reign  of  righteousness. 

The  denial  either  of  the  sovereignty  of  God  in  the  interests 
of  free-will,  or  of  free-will  in  the  interests  of  sovereignty,  may 
seem  intellectually  more  heroic  than  the  attempt  to  har- 
monize the  two,  yet  apart  from  deduced  consequences  there  is 
no  self-evident  contradiction  between  them.  "  The  two  great 
postulates  of  divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom  carry  a 
convincing  note  of  reality,  as  the  distant  conclusions  to  which 
they  have  been  speculatively  carried  do  not."'  A  theodicy 
which  at  once  asserts  eternal  providence  and  human  free- 
dom may  find  support  in  the  complementary  feelings  of 
dependence  and  of  guilt  or  responsibility  upon  which,  empiri- 
cally, these  doctrines  may  be  said  to  rest. 

The  apparent  "  antinomy,"  so  far  as  it  affects  our  view  of 
God,  is  between  the  metaphysical  attributes  of  omniscience 
(including  knowledge  of  all  the  future)  and  omnipotence, 
and  the  moral  attributes  of  holiness  and  justice.  That  no 
purely  speculative  solution  is  for  our  thought  possible  may 
follow  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  for  in  the  relation  of  the 
human  to  the  divine  will,  the  deepest  problems  of  philosophy, 

^  T.  S.  Hamlin,  D.  D.,  in  Independent,  Jan.  16,  1902, 


2  2  I  ]  FREE-  WILL  AND  THE  OLOGY  g  j 

both  intellectual  and  moral,  are  focused.  The  problem  in- 
volves the  relation  of  the  one  to  the  many,  of  being  to  be- 
coming, of  the  eternal  to  the  temporal,  of  the  perfect  to  the 
imperfect,  of  the  Holy  One  to  that  evil  in  the  creature  whose 
very  existence  casts  for  us  a  shadow  upon  the  complete  ra- 
tionality of  the  universe.  Modern  theology  has,  we  believe, 
in  these  circumstances  rightly  chosen  to  follow  our  deepest 
moral  and  religious  instincts  rather  than  to  sacrifice  either  to 
the  supposed  claims  of  speculative  consistency.  The  re- 
ligious consciousness  shrinks  from  holding  that  God  was  the 
author  of  sin,  or  that  He  could  create  a  world  without 
knowledge  of  the  consequences  of  the  creative  act;  and  our 
moral  experience  testifies  not  only  to  a  freedom  of  choice 
which  shall  make  morality  possible,  but  to  the  working  of  a 
Power  not  ourselves,  which  makes  for  righteousness,  and 
works  not  to  annihilate  the  human  will,  but  to  secure  an 
ethical  harmony  between  it  and  the  divine. 


VITA. 


The  writer  was  born  in  New  York  City,  December  3rd, 
1865.  After  preparatory  training  at  Dr.  Chapin's  Collegiate 
School,  he  entered  Princeton  (then  the  College  of  New  Jer- 
sey), in  September,  1883,  graduating  (A.  B.)  in  1888.  In 
college,  studied  philosophy  under  Drs.  McCosh,  Patton  and 
Ormond,  and  at  graduation  was  awarded  the  Chancellor 
Green  Mental  Science  Fellowship.  Entered  Princeton  The- 
ological Seminary  in  1894,  graduating  in  1896.  In  1896-97 
was  a  graduate  student  at  Princeton,  receiving  in  1897  the 
degrees  of  A.  M.  from  the  University  and  B.  D.  from  the 
Theological  Seminary.  For  four  years,  1 897-1901,  was 
professor  of  Logic  and  Psychology  in  Centre  College,  Dan- 
ville, Kentucky,  and  instructor  in  New  Testament  Literature 
in  Danville  Theological    Seir'aary.     Student  in  Columbia 

University  in  1 901-1902. 

93 


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